The Annual Open-Air Vienna Mozart Film Festival Spreads to Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Slovenia, and Romania

Each summer, Vienna's Rathausplatz -- the vast square in front of City Hall -- transforms into an open-air cinema for the annual Film Festival am Rathausplatz. The programme focuses on operas, classical concerts, and music films projected free of charge onto a giant screen; the Vienna Symphony Orchestra traditionally opens proceedings with a live performance.

In 2006, framed as the Vienna Mozart Music Film Festival, the programme expanded beyond Austria for the first time. Eastern European capitals -- Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Zagreb, Belgrade, Warsaw, Ljubljana, and Bucharest -- each hosted summer evenings of outdoor music-film screenings on prominent city squares, free to the public. Programmes centred on Mozart but ranged across other composers and musical theatre.