THE SCENT OF RAIN IN THE BALKANS

This is a book that has been reprinted for many, many times. After a quarter of century of its existence, the most famous literary work of Gordana Kuic, The Scent of Rain in the Balkans, has moved to the theatre stage. This is a story of a Sephardic Sarajevo’s family in romantic and turbulent war times during the Second World War.

Riki, Blanki, Buka and Nina, the heroines with whom generations of female and male readers identified themselves, bowed to the spectators at the Large Stage of Madlenianum Opera and Theatre. The performance in dramatization of Nebojsa Romcevic, directing of Ana Radivojevic Zdravkovic, and with a generous assistance and patronage of the author, Gordana Kuic herself – The Scent of Rain in the Balkans is a new big hit of Madlenianum, for which all tickets for the season 2008/2009 were sold out immediately.

The author, Gordana Kuic, wrote about this performance: „On the stage of Madlenianum, the concentration of talent, youth and beauty will present the characters from my first novel The Scent of Rain in the Balkans, the characters who have not been invented but existed and represented my closest family, but who, to my regret, had gone for long time already. And there is nothing without a story. Il faut que le roman raconte, the novel must narrate, as Stendhal points out, and it is my golden rule, too. My family – mother Blanka, aunts Laura, Nina, Klara and Riki, with their husbands, Serbs, Jews and Croats, uncles Isac and Elias with their wives – has lived a great story. Same as many inhabitants of turbulent Balkans during the tempestuous times between the two world wars. However, I have not begun to record the great story for itself, but for the fact that its heroes were the members of Spanish Jews, so called Sephards, the populace almost eradicated from the map of Sarajevo during the Holocaust.“

The attractive text and famous actors, says the audience almost in unison, when the word is about the secret of the success of this production of Madlenianum. The title role of Blanka is played by Sloboda Micalovic, and there is also Ivan Bosiljcic in the role of Ignja. In addition to these acting stars, the participants in the performance are also Jovana Balasevic (Riki), Dubravka Mijatovic (Mina), Isidora Minic (Buka) and Ljiljana Stjepanovic, as Ester. 

The première of the hit performance The Scent of Rain in the Balkans was on 12th April, 2009.