The most talked-about event at the Great Amber Concert Hall in 2027 has already been decided. Sun & Sea (Saulė ir jūra), the Lithuanian opera-performance that won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the 2019 Venice Biennale, will make its Latvian debut at the hall from 8 to 11 April 2027. It will run multiple times per day across those four dates. Tickets are already on sale, with prices rising from 1 September 2026.
The piece involves an artificial beach — onstage. Soloists sing about the climate crisis, consumer society, and the slow weight of contemporary anxiety against a backdrop of ordinary seaside scenes: sunbathers, children, people reading books. The libretto by Vaiva Grainytė blends irony with genuine dread. The music by Lina Lapelytė holds both registers at once. It is not a conventional opera in any sense, which is partly why it won what it won.
The audience stands — on the first and second balconies, looking down at the beach below. It is designed to disorient in a specific way.
An Unusual Opening for an Unusual Year
Grainytė, speaking ahead of the Liepāja performances, noted that “Liepāja’s proximity to the Baltic sea brings the piece back to its native shore.” Sun & Sea was developed from Baltic coastal memories — from childhood experiences of that particular kind of seaside leisure that feels simultaneously carefree and loaded. Running it in a city on the Baltic coast, in a concert hall designed around amber from that same sea, is not incidental.
That the (un)rest programme would open its flagship venue with a piece about environmental fragility and the weight of a leisure culture that consumes without thinking — in a city with a complicated relationship with military presence, Soviet-era occupation, and post-industrial identity — is consistent with the programme’s logic. The theme of (un)rest is not ornamental. Sun & Sea makes it specific.
What Else the Hall Will Host
Sun & Sea is the headline, but the hall’s culture programme for 2027 extends across the year and across formats.
The Liepāja Symphony Orchestra’s own contribution includes Vēju vīrs Pankoks — an opera performed on 11 June 2027 in the Great Hall as part of the Opera by the Sea Festival, which sits within the ECoC programme and is funded by the Ministry of Culture, the City of Liepāja, and the municipalities of South Kurzeme and Kuldīga.
The “Stars in Amber” international concert series continues in 2027, bringing world-class soloists and ensembles to the Great Hall. The series has run since the hall opened in 2015 and has established Liepāja as a serious classical music destination in the Baltic region. In the ECoC year, the series carries additional weight — it is how the hall demonstrates that 2027 is not the beginning of its international ambition, but an acceleration of it.
The hall has also shown a willingness to use its spaces for events well outside classical music. A rave party — part of the Liepāja Art Forum — was held in the public areas of the building, with Latvian DJ Ksenia Kamikaza headlining and visual artists transforming the upper floors for the night. Whether programming of this kind runs through the 2027 calendar is not yet confirmed in full, but the appetite is clearly there.
The Chamber Hall and Experimental Stage — 200 and 120 seats respectively — carry the programme’s more intimate and experimental work. The Great Hall seats 1,000; not everything the ECoC year needs fits that scale or that formality.
About Liepāja
Liepāja is Latvia’s third city — population around 67,000, on the Baltic coast, three hours from Riga by bus or car. The Great Amber Concert Hall sits close to the city centre, on the eastern bank of the Tirdzniecības Canal. The Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1881, is the oldest professional orchestra in the Baltic states and the hall’s resident ensemble.
The city has a live music culture that runs considerably deeper than its size suggests — it has been called the rock capital of Latvia — and the Great Amber has given the classical and contemporary ends of that culture a serious home. The wind off the sea shapes the city. Liepāja in April, when Sun & Sea runs, is Baltic spring. It will be cold. The beach inside the concert hall will be warmer than the one outside.
Liepāja and the European Capital of Culture
The ECoC designation is awarded by the European Commission. It runs for one calendar year, designed to place European cities outside the major cultural centres into international focus. In 2027, three cities hold the designation: Liepāja in Latvia, Évora in Portugal, and České Budějovice in the Czech Republic. Liepāja’s programme is called (un)rest. It runs from April to December 2027. The Great Amber Concert Hall is central to it.
Visiting Liepāja for Great Amber in 2027
Sun & Sea runs 8–11 April 2027; tickets via Biļešu Paradīze. Prices increase from 1 September 2026. For the full programme at the Great Amber, see the official concert hall site and the Liepāja 2027 events calendar.
