The 77th Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Croatia’s oldest and most prestigious cultural festival, opened with a guest appearance by the Munich Radio Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Ivan Repušić. The performance celebrated the long-standing cultural ties between Croatia and Germany while also marking Maestro Repušić’s farewell to the orchestra, which he had led as Chief Conductor since 2017.
On 10 July, Maestro Repušić conducted the Munich Radio Orchestra at the Festival’s ceremonial opening, joining numerous artists in the traditional opening celebration held in front of the Church of St Vlaho. The ceremony culminated in a magnificent performance of Hymn to Freedom (Himna slobodi) by Jakov Gotovac, based on verses by Ivan Gundulić. The work has been performed by the Munich Radio Orchestra under the baton of Ivan Repušić on several occasions: from its 2019 performance at Zagreb’s Lisinski Concert Hall with the Bavarian Radio Choir, and the award-winning 2020 BR-Klassik recording, through its collaboration with the Croatian Radiotelevision Choir at Munich’s Herkulessaal in 2022, to the Maestro’s recent farewell concert at the Prinzregententheater, once again with the Bavarian Radio Choir. In Dubrovnik, together with the Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir and Dubrovnik choirs, Maestro Repušić and the Munich Radio Orchestra brought this remarkable artistic journey full circle.
The following evening, 11 July, the Munich Radio Orchestra and Maestro Repušić inaugurated the Festival’s concert program with Carmina Burana, the iconic cantata by the Munich-born Carl Orff, alongside works by Vatroslav Lisinski and Richard Wagner. The performance featured Croatian soloists Marija Kuhar Šoša (soprano), Franko Klisović (countertenor), and Ljubomir Puškarić (baritone), together with the Ivan Goran Kovačić Academic Choir and the Children’s Choir of the Luka Sorkočević School of Arts, prepared by Ivan Šćepanović.
The Dubrovnik performances carried profound personal significance for Maestro Repušić. Besides concluding his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Munich Radio Orchestra, they also marked the 25th anniversary of his debut at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. They fulfilled a long-held artistic ambition: to appear at the Festival together with his colleagues from the Munich Radio Orchestra after nine years of their shared musical journey, during which they recorded five albums dedicated to Croatian music. Among these is Jakov Gotovac’s opera Ero the Joker (Ero s onoga svijeta), whose exuberant Final Kolo served as an especially moving encore, bringing the concert to an emotional close.
The concerts were made possible through the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia, the Consulate General of the Republic of Croatia in Munich, the Croatian National Tourist Board, Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT), which provided a live broadcast of both evenings.