History

The beginnings of the Ljubljana Summer Festival date back to 1952 when the Tourist Society of Ljubljana organized the first Tourist Week, which was followed by the first Ljubljana Festival in 1953. Since then, it has featured a number of cultural, business, folklore, tourist and sports events.

After 1953 Ljubljana continued to host Summer Festivals every year, and each summer the stages in the capital came alive with performances of domestic and foreign musicians, actors, dancers, artists, etc., such as Dubravka Tomšič, Marjana Lipovšek, Grace Bumbry, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, José Carreras, Slide Hampton, Pierre Amoyal, Yuri Bashmet, Misha Maiski, Shlomo Mintz, Krzysztof Penderecki, Riccardo Muti, Gidon Kremer, Valery Gergiev, Vladimir Askenazi, Julian Rachlin, Angela Gheorghiu, Maceo Parker, Wynton Marsalis, Celia Cruz, Gilberto Gil, Alexander Vedernikov, Marcelo Alvarez, Bernarda Fink and Mojca Zlobko Vajgl, Vadim Repin, Zubin Mehta, sir Andrew Davis, Midori, Ennio Morricone, Manhattan Transfer and many others, as well as the world greatest symphony orchestras such as New York and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from London, Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre from St. Petersburg and some opera houses, among which were the famous Academic Bolshoi Theatre from Moscow and Milan's Scala..

The Festival has evolved, changed and grown, and it has affected the cultural life in Slovenia considerably. In the last few years, between 70 and 80 events of different genres have taken place at the Summer Festival, attended by about 80,000 domestic and foreign visitors, which shows that the Festival has won recognition as an important summer festival. This encourages us, the organizers, to keep preparing festivals at the highest artistic level in the years to come.