Stage free, Festivalissimo!

"We are all about embassy, tolerance and encounters," said director Sissy Thammer yesterday evening in front of over 300 invited guests for the opening of the 68th FESTIVAL YOUNG ARTISTS BAYREUTH in the fully occupied Europasaal of the "Zentrum". The festive opening event was festively and musically peppy with Ukrainian folk music and works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and George Frideric Handel.

Contributors were the chamber choir Novi Sad and the soprano Radóslava Vorgić from Serbia, the Swedish organist Karl Magnus Jansson and the Canadian violinist Noémy Gagnon-Lafrenai. Film producer Leon Rsokoni and Dr. Benedikt Holtbernd, former dramaturge of the Semperoper and artistic advisor to the FESTIVAL YOUNG ARTISTS BAYREUTH, presented details on the planned image film "Follow Your Passion - Festivalissimo!". Following the opening concert, the guests met for fireworks and music for the first filming of the image film: Visitors as film actors.

66 concerts, two world premieres and 561 participants from all over the world - the FESTIVAL YOUNG ARTISTS BAYREUTH presents itself as big as never before. On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Friedelind Wagner, the musical psychogram "Friedelind: Eine Wagner!" By Claus J. Frankl will be performed in four performances.
"Passio Compassio. Passion and Suffering" combines two completely contradictory themes: The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach and" The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny "by Kurt Weill, an opera in which fun society and consumerism finally lead to destruction. Redemption, on the other hand, is the title of the concert series "Pilgrim Paths to Paradise". Claudio Monteverdi's Marienvesper, in which Fred Sjöberg conducts various choirs from Europe, also deals with spiritual content.