“to Preserve what could be”: a few tens of festivals of performing arts want to make a good figure in this was broken by the coronavirus, is réimaginant with gauge reduced, concerts broadcast on the internet or in the open air.
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After the avalanche of cancellations, festivals and venues are always subject to the rules of distancing drastic, something to become indignant artists and producers who feel aggrieved in relation to other sectors.
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If they seem very pale in comparison with their previous editions, manifestations of classical music, opera, theatre or circus that have been reengineered to be see as an act of resistance in a climate of doom and gloom.
“to Keep a whisper of theatre”
“I couldn’t leave Avignon muzzled,” says AFP Serge Barbuscia, president of Scenes of Avignon, which includes five theatres of the City of the Popes, deprived this year of its famous festivals, the “in” and “off”.
“we needed to do something. We are the keepers of the fire, and we wanted to keep a whisper of theatre,” adds the director of theatre.
16 taken 23 July, he organizes readings of a dozen contemporary texts unpublished at the Palace of the Popes, a place of Avignon. “We return to the essence of theatre, with these updates in the voice.”
dozens of actors and actresses will read these texts not in the Court of honor, scene emblematic of the “in”, but in the Cloister, which is adjacent, in the open air. Two readings are planned for the evening (18H30 and 20H30) in front of an audience of 100 people (free entrance on reservation).
Of texts, which “come to be written, on topics of today”. Among the authors : Peter Notte, Serge Valleti, Rémi De Vos, Matei Visniec or Eric Bu Laura and Leonie who have written “about a couple who think they saw the end of the world”.
Among the other events announced : the Festival Hours Music from the Abbey of Lessay in Normandy with 270 spectators in the roman church, the Festival of the Forests, which offers “baths forest music” with twenty people per group to Laigue and Compiègne, or even the circus festival Centre’s annual international arts movement in Aix-en-provence (200 people in the open air every night).
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similarly, the musical Encounters of Evian will offer six concerts (4-9 July), the half of its initial programming. The Barn to the Lake, room 1100 seats famous for its link with the legendary Rostropovich, will host 150 spectators for concerts broadcast live on Radio Classique and the platform Medici.tv.
It will be a display of chamber music – the presence of large orchestras on stage still posing a problem, with artists mainly based in France, including the Quatuor Ebène, Gautier Capuçon, Alexander Kantorow and Bertrand Chamayou.
“We will adapt to get the most people possible if the tonnage allowed is changing,” says Philippe Bernhard, the artistic director. “We wanted to preserve what could be, and to save something, in particular the ecosystem of the festival”, he says. “The organiser is the first of the dominoes, from the moment we drop the arm, all the others collapse”.
A state of mind shared by Pierre Audi, artistic director of the Festival Aix-en-Provence, one of the most important manifestations of lyric art in the world : “it is necessary to build and tell the people that we will be there in the after-crisis.”
“plan 2021”
The Festival, originally scheduled from 30 June to 18 July, has not had the luck of the calendar of Salzburg, a rare survivor of the great summer events, which will be held during the month of August. Or the international piano festival of la Roque d’anthéron, also held in August.
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To Pierre Audi, it was “very difficult to hold a ticket, even a limited one. It is necessary to create multiple entries for places such as the Theatre of the Archdiocese; it was far too late.”
In the absence of the five productions ambitious opera planned, the Festival has maintained its recitals (closed to the public and broadcast via the internet), with the artists originally scheduled as the baritone Christian Gerhaher, the conductor Simon Rattle or the soprano Sabine Devieilhe. For the operas, “I try to keep a maximum of productions intact for the next editions,” says Audi. “You have to project in 2021.”
The editorial team conseilleLe Champs-Élysées Film Festival, window on a world dreamed of and chaotiqueLes festivals? What a festival!The Lille Piano(s) Festival, held in a digital version inédite1 commentairegarincole 17/06/2020 16:55
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