Stevan Hristić

Upon his return to Belgrade before the start of the World War I, Hristić began his conducting career at the National Theatre and resumed pedagogical activities at the Serbian Music School as well as at the Seminary.

Hristić's musical language is characterized by melodic inventiveness, colorful orchestration, late romanticist and partially impressionistic harmonies, and clarity and transparency of formal structure.

Despite the fact that Hristić started his work on The legend during the late 1920s with Act I even being performed for celebration of the composer's 25th career anniversary (1933), the ballet was completed only following the end of the World War II.

It premiered at the National Theatre in Belgrade on 29 November 1947 in choreography by Margarita Froman, set design by Vladimir Zedrinski, and costumes by Milica Babić.

The ballet was equally successfully performed during numerous visiting shows in Edinburgh (1951), Athens (1952), Wiesbaden and Salzburg (1953), Geneva and Zurich (1953), Florence and Wien (1955), Cairo (1961), and Barcelona (1965).

For the 1958 premiere held at the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre, Hristić added certain numbers that shaped the final version of the ballet.

The integral performance and the first recording of the entire ballet music were completed in 2008 (edited by Dejan Despić in 1985) on occasion of the 50th anniversary of the composer's death (Radio Television Serbia Symphony and Choir with conductor Bojan Suđić).

"The score may lack modernist pretension, but its clean lines and bright colours have been so beautifully realised that Ohridska legenda stands today as one of the significant achievements of Yugoslav music.

Alongside Vojnović's text, the lyrics of the poem “The Dreams” (“Snovi”) by Jovan Dučić (for Luyo's arioso “Oh, how it hearts” (“Vaj, kako to boli”)) are incorporated in the libretto, thus fitting by its overall mood into the drama's emotional ambience.

The first oratorio in Serbian music, Resurrection, conceived upon the text by Dragutin Ilić, was premiered in 1912, declaring in a way interests toward new genres of then young composers’ generation.