35th Anniversary

At the end of last year, the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall celebrated 35 years of its existence. The history of this remarkable cultural institution has left a mark on Zagreb with its impressive repertoire and this year, again, a rich and innovative program has been prepared for its numerous patrons.

The 35th anniversary of the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall was marked in late December last year with a performance by the recipients of the “Ivo Vuljević” Award of the Croatian Musical Youth Organization, the Zagreb philharmonics, the Symphonic Orchestra of the Croatian Radio-Television and numerous great names from the worlds of opera and classical music. All of these events continued late into the night and the lobby of the large hall was turned into a dance floor to allow the audience to celebrate, in style, the significant anniversary of Zagreb’s “temple of culture”. The concert hall was named after the great Croatian composer Vatroslav Lisinski, the author of the first Croatian opera “Ljubav i zloba” (Love and Malice).  During its 35 year existence, the concert hall has hosted the most renowned orchestras, conductors, and musicians on its stages. Last year, in excess of 400,000 people attended over 500 shows held at Lisinski. The concert hall building consists of a large hall with 1841 seats and a small hall with 305 seats. There are four meeting salons, a large multi-functional lobby suitable for  exhibitions or cocktail parties, and a pleasant ground-floor café. The Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall is in the close proximity of the Regent Esplanade Zagreb Hotel and the International Hotel.

Starting this year, the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall will offer its audiences live broadcasts of shows from the New York Metropolitan Opera. The first such broadcast will be of Puccini’s opera “La Rondine” (The Swallow) on January 10th. Besides attending “live” performances, opera aficionados will also be able to view what goes on at the famous New York Theater during the breaks and hear the conversations between the performers and the authors. In staging such live broadcasts, the Zagreb’s concert hall follows suit of the famous La Scala of Milan where the same practice has also been recently introduced.