50 godini Festival Ohridsko leto
12 ¼óëè - 20 àâãóñò 2010
50 Years Ohrid Summer Festival
July 12 - August 20, 2010
Dear guests, I have the immense honour and pleasure in being able to revisit the artistic history and the cultural tradition of the most renowned event of international character being held in our country, the “Ohrid Summer Festival”, and in having the opportunity to greet and welcome all of the authors, all of the superior performing artists from Macedonia and the world, all of you who have embedded a part of themselves in this festival, furnishing it with love and longevity. In the past fifty years the Ohrid Summer Festival, by uniting the beauty of music and dance, visual impressions and the messages of the stage expression, it has voiced, enlivened and upgraded the monumental creations of the human spirit that are materialized in ancient Ohrid: the cathedral church of “Saint Sophia”, the Ancient Theatre, King Samoil’s Fortress, the magnificent Plaoshnik … The reverberation of the creations of the myriad of musicians and actors, opera and theatre houses has been complementing the high spiritual values of the past that are embedded in the artistic creation of the present, and has been offering the audience a virtuoso artistic expression, an intense continuity of the creative and performing energy that the greatest mediators - the artists from all meridians - exchanged on the territory of our country. In the course of the past 50 years, the Ohrid cultural proscenium has witnessed the most prominent names of the contemporary scene, and offered a medium for presentation of a large number of Macedonian artists - the most successful promoters of Macedonian endemicity within the European and worldwide family of arts. By building itself, the festival has also permanently positioned the city of Ohrid – this transversal of the ancient ages, this hearth of Saint Clement’s spirit, this unfaltering building at the heart of the Balkans – as an area dedicated to progress and to the cosmopolitan spirit of arts. Please allow me to offer my congratulations for the jubilee of the event, and express my wish that we would all experience many more artistic catharses... The resplendent artistic achievements continue to speak about creativity as the primary extract in the act of human existence. I am confident that the future is ahead of us and that for long years, here, in the Republic of Macedonia, under the starry Ohrid night, art shall persevere as sustenance of the human spirit.
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Minister of Culture Elizabeta Kancheska-Milevska, M.A.