Tickets for some XXVII Latvian Song and XVII Dance Celebration concerts are still available, informed Linda Ertmane, representative of the Latvian National Cultural Center.
On Monday, the 12th of June, at 10, tickets for XXVII Latvian Song and XVII Dance Celebration events, which were not redeemed in the previous reservation, went on public sale. By 2 in the afternoon, 8,437 tickets and free admission cards were purchased or collected.
From Monday, it is also possible to pick up entrance cards for the XXVII Latvian Song and XVII Dance Celebration free events.
Those interested are offered the opportunity to attend the final competition of dance collectives on the 17th of June, at the International Exhibition Center in Ķīpsala. One person can claim two entrance cards.
Tickets are also available for the concert of senior collectives, Klusums reiz par tautu tapa, which will take place on the 3rd of July in Riga Circus, and amateur theater performances in Mikhail Chekhov’s Riga Russian Theater on the 6th and 7th of July.
The entrance to the free concerts of XXVII Latvian Song and XVII Dance Celebration, which will be held in churches – brass band concerts, and sacred music concerts – will be with free admission cards, that will be available at the entrance to the concert. Entrance to the choir finals will be without admission cards.
The Song and Dance Festival organizers say that the purchase of tickets on Monday went without complications.
Aina, a resident of Vecmīlgrāvis, had a different experience. She told the media that, taking into account the unsuccessful experience of buying festival tickets on the Internet, she decided to buy them at the information center of the cultural palace Ziemeļblāzma, where the Biļešu Paradīze office was recently opened.
The woman stated that she arrived on time and was the only customer waiting for the opening.
Shortly before 10, the cashier and her friend arrived. Instead of serving the first and only person waiting for the ticket stand to open, the cashier and her acquaintance bought the tickets for themselves first.
“When the cashier started serving me, all the tickets for the concert I was interested in were already in the process of being sold. The cashier tried unsuccessfully to find a free ticket for several minutes until finally, she found one ticket. But I refused it because I needed two tickets for the concert,” Aina shared her experience.
In her opinion, a certain number of tickets should have been reserved for sale at the ticket stand, so that even people who do not have access to the Internet could buy them. In addition, the developers of the trading platform could mark the tickets that are already in the process of sale, so that the cashier does not have to click all the boxes in vain in search of a free ticket for sale.
Aina told that she was upset by the cashier’s behavior in not providing service to the customer.
“I really don’t understand why the festival organizers have been unable to provide arrangements for the sale of tickets for years. Every time there are misunderstandings and disrespectful behavior towards customers,” Aina regretfully admitted.
Jānis Ķuzulis, the chairman of the board of SIA Biļešu Paradīze, told the media that he has no information about such an incident, and he promised to find out and solve it.
In the evening, Aina informed the media that she had received an apology from the company, as well as purchased and received tickets that could not be purchased in the morning at the ticket stand of the Ziemeļblāzma Information Center.
Also, on Monday morning, the journalists found out at the Biļešu Paradīze ticket stand that the sale of tickets for the Song Festival concerts is not going so smoothly.
“Monday morning brought disappointment and tears to the ticket stands,”
reports TV3 news.
The organizers of the XXVII Latvian Song and XVII Dance Celebration informed the media that online tickets were already sold out within the first three minutes, so those who were waiting in the live queue at the ticket office left empty-handed.
Some ticket buyers joined the queue one and a half even two hours before the ticket stand opened. On Monday morning, only one person managed to buy tickets for the concerts of the Song and Dance Festival that they were interested in, TV3 news observed.