My Opera House of the Future

Rediscover music, art, and architecture.

The young participants from our city and region become enthusiastic explorers who can rediscover the relevance of art and music to their own lives and help shape it.

Against the backdrop of theaters, concert halls, and opera houses that are increasingly failing to sell out, the Festival of Young Artists has, for several years now, been placing an ever-greater emphasis on innovative educational projects. How can we successfully inspire students from Bayreuth’s schools to embrace the great traditional heritage of classical theater and opera in a playful way? Our approach is not to present students with a simplified version of complex works of art (such as *The Magic Flute* for children, etc.) in the familiar “proscenium box” style. We want to enable the next generation to give free rein to their creativity, which is still largely uninfluenced.

“Here, time becomes space,” says the fatherly Gurnemanz to the astonished Parsifal, as the two witness the trees transforming into the columns of a Grail temple. The young people gather a variety of materials—both intellectual and physical—to build their own festival hall. There, they will be able to present their own artistic contributions (speaking, painting, singing, making music). The goal is for children and young people to discover for themselves the relevance of music, art, and architecture within a society that is becoming increasingly distant from the arts, by engaging with the phenomenon of the festival theater in all its facets. The educational creative team, composed of members from various artistic disciplines, helps the children and young people develop and implement project ideas in a playful manner.