Subotica Mourns Wreckage of Serbia’s Oldest Theatre

Subotica Theatre before recostructions

Four years after the city council in Subotica controversially decided to extensively rebuild the neoclassical National Theatre, the oldest in Serbia, the building remains an eyesore.

Both the goverments of Serbia and the regional authorities in the northern Vojvodina province say they don’t have the money to complete the expensive reconstruction work, which many local architests and activists bitterly opposed from the start.

The two governments signed the contract to rebuild the theatre, built in the 1850s, in 2007, before demolition of two-thirds of the theatre began in June that year.

Together, they pledged to come up with 90 per cent of the 25 million euro needed, leaving the city to find the remaining 10 per cent. But today they say the cash has run short, blaming postponement of the work on the economic crisis.

Subotica Theatre today

Today, the ruined-looking theatre presents a dismal sight to passers-by and there appears no way that reconstruction will be completed by 2012, as the authorities optimistically predicted.

The reconstruction plan was one of the country’s costliest investments in the field of culture.

Some local experts protested immediately over the plan to replace two-thirds of the Neoclassical monument with a modern glass and concrete extension.

They noted that the theatre had been put under state protection as a historic monument as long ago as 1983, while in 1991 it was added to the National Register as a monument of extraordinary cultural value.  

They are angry about the fact that when the decision was made to demolish two-thirds of the theatre, the National Register decided to keep only front facade, the ballet hall and the foyers under protection.

The Ministry of Culture accepted this decision, leaving two-thirds of the theatre unprotected, after which demolition begun.
 
“Unfortunately the financial plan is not realistic anymore and investors don’t have the money to pay the construction company, so they don't want to work anymore,” the Chairman of the Board of the National Theatre, Jozef Kasa, said.

Subotica Theatre under reconstructions

“They are stopping construction work due to the fact that we already owe them a large amount of money,” he added.

“The Capital Investment Fund of the Region of Vojvodina, CIFRV, gave some money to the construction company, but then they stopped and now the company doesn’t want to continue working,” he continued.

Adding to the problems, thieves last year stole more than 400,000 old bricks, which were supposed to give an old-fashioned look to the restored front façade.

“The police don’t have any information [about the bricks] so we have another huge problem, because now it will be very hard to give an old look to the new [front of the] building,” Kasa explained.

Kasa claimed that central government much gave more money for the country’s biggest cities - Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis – than it does for Subotica, which has a large Hungarian community and lies to the border with Hungary.

He further claimed that Istvan Pastor, a member of the board of the Capital Investments Fund of Vojvodina was deliberately holding up money from the Fund.

Istvan Pastor declined to respond to that accusation, saying only that the grants available from the Fund were limited.

He described the original plan for the theatre as overambitious. “The plan for the reconstruction and renovation of the theatre should be as realistic as possible,” Pastor told Balkan insight.

According to the media service of CIFRV, the Fund has already invested 2 million euros in the theatre and is planning to invest 1 million more by the end of the year.

On a recent visit to the theatre, Oliver Dulic, Serbia’s Minister for the Environment and Spatial Planning, warned that central government did not have the cash at hand to finish such a grandiose project.

“We are trying to find a new model of financing that will enable us to complete the project in years to come,” he said.

“Likewise, we have to find realistic solutions and we will ask the designers to adapt those facilities that are necessary for the theatre.”

In the meantime, both the Serbian and Hungarian ensembles of the National Theatre have to work in makeshift conditions.

Ljubica Ristovski

Ljubica Ristovski, director of the theatre, said both ensembles now rehearsed in a disused factory, which she described as cold and dusty. Performances take place in the city’s old “Jadran” cinema.

“Our actors were freezing over the winter because there was no way to heat the factory hall,” he said. “They practise in awful conditions but regardless of the conditions in which they work, last year they played around 250 performances.”

In spite of the grim working conditions, the players won a prize in a theatre festival in Bosnia while pulling in packed audiences in Subotica itself, he continued.

The local authorities of Subotica say they have done their best, giving the theatre 25,000 euros to pay the rent for the factory. They say they have no other money to improve conditions for rehearsals.

Opponents of the original plan say they were justified in condemning the reconstruction plan from the word go.

A significant number of local people joined a campaign to save the old theatre, 5,000 of whom signed a petition.

The UN's cultural arm, UNESCO, supported them, saying the building should be renovated without recourse to demolition.

The first monumental public building in Subotica, then known as Szabadka, in Austria-Hungary, the theatre was built in 1854 during the era of so-called Bach’s absolutism - a period of the intense Habsburg political oppression in Hungary, following Hungary’s failed war of independence in 1848/9.

In its more than 150-year history, the theatre underwent several reconstructions, the most extensive of which was in 1927, to renovate the auditorium, which had been badly damaged by a fire in 1915.

After surviving two world wars and major political and social upheavals, the theatre had become a unique symbol of civic pride in Subotica.

But local politicians and the theatre management insisted that the building was in a poor condition, making demolition inevitable.

Viktorija Aladzic

One of the city's leading architects, Viktorija Aladzic, disagrees. “The decision to tear down the old theatre was made by people who don’t have a clue about architecture,” Aladzic said.

“Research by a team of architects and myself concluded that theatre could have been renovated without demolition,” she told Balkan insight, adding that it had been senseless to start demolition without a secure budget.

Aladzic laments the loss of a historic monument of great local importance, now gone forever.

She goes on to note that the Hungarian office of ICOMOS, an advisory body to UNESCO, appealed to the authorities of Subotica and Serbia to save the theatre.

“Michael Petzet, president of ICOMOS, sent a letter to Voja Brajovic, Serbia’s former minister of culture, appealing for him to prevent the demolition of the old Subotica theatre,” she recalled.

“But the members of the ICOMOS office in Serbia were not even permitted to inspect the building, and in June 2007 the demolition began, despite all efforts to save the building,” she added.

Former chief architect of Subotica, Sabo Zombor, who lost his job before the reconstruction of theatre began, owing to his opposition to the demolition, said he could not stand by in silence as the old theatre was destroyed only for it to be mainly replaced by what he called a concrete and glass monstrosity.
 
“The existing theatre was one of the country's highest achievements,” Ristovski said. “Nobody destroys their greatest achievements from earlier eras - apart from us [in Serbia],” Aladzic added.

This article is funded under the BICCED project, supported by the Swiss Cultural Programme.