|
The 2006 Reykjavík Arts Festival, May 12 to June 2, will be the 20th since the festival’s inauguration in 1970.This year’s programme will consist of some 50 events with the participation of more than 500 artists, over 300 of them Icelanders and over 100 international visitors.
Music will be at the forefront of this year’s festival, with a special focus on the Icelandic cultural institutions which have from the beginning formed the backbone of the Arts Festival. These include the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, the Icelandic Opera, the National Theatre of Iceland, the City Theatre and the Icelandic Dance Company, all of which will be presenting exciting events at the festival. There will also be major concerts by the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra and the Caput
Ensemble.
This year’s highlights include the Icelandic premieres of three operas: the French work Le Pays, by composer Joseph-Guy Ropartz, will be performed in an innovative space in the courtyard at the Harbour House by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra and some of Iceland’s best- known singers, while over at the National Theatre a youthful cast from the Summer Opera company will premiere Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber. The third opera will be an entertaining baroque work performed by the wonderful I Fagiolini, one of the UK’s leading vocal ensembles, in
collaboration with the Icelandic Opera.
As in the previous two years, since the festival became an annual event, the spotlight will be on one branch of the arts, but the other arts will also be celebrated. In addition to music, dance will occupy an important place with five different shows, while various cultural institutions linked to education and research will play a major role in the festival. These include the National Library, the National Museum, the City Library, the Reykjavík Museum of Photography, the University of Iceland and the Reykjavík Art Museum, which all have highly innovative projects on this year’s programme. Of particular interest at this festival are a number of conferences and courses attracting first-rate international speakers. These include the Pinter seminar at the National Theatre at which the keynote speaker will be one of the world’s foremost Pinter experts, Michael Billington; an introduction to prize-winning Nordic plays at the City Theatre; a conference organised by the Icelandic Music Information
Centre at which composer Paul Hoffert will talk about music promotion on the internet, and a master class given by the British ensemble I Fagiolini at the Icelandic Opera.
As in previous years the Arts Festival welcomes artists from far- flung parts of the world which are seldom represented on the Icelandic cultural scene: there are large contingents from Bulgaria, Brazil and South Africa, as well as artists from Poland, Italy, France, Germany, the UK and Scandinavia with a range of diverse projects, often in collaboration with Icelandic artists.
The Arts Festival will also extend beyond the city limits as in previous years: the Hafnarfjörður Chamber Orchestra and visiting Italian artists will perform music based on Nino Rota’s soundtrack for Fellini’s film La Strada, in conjunction with a showing of the movie. And it will be a great day for music in the east of Iceland when the North Iceland Symphony Orchestra performs Haydn’s Creation with local choirs from the East Fjords. Meanwhile an impressive Icelandic Settlement Centre will be opened in Borgarnes, west Iceland, with the premiere of a new show about the saga hero Egill Skalla-Grímsson, and in the heart of Reykjavík the Settlement Exhibition in Adalstraeti will be unveiled in a special ceremony on the opening day of the festival, May 12.
Musical events include the Bulgarian women’s voice choir Angelite, one of the most celebrated women’s choirs in the world today, who have been showered with awards for their unique singing style; the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra’s Mozart concerts featuring some of Iceland’s top soloists at Langholtskirkja Church; the Caput Ensemble’s premiere of Tears of Dionysus by Lars Graugard, featuring one of Scandinavia’s leading actresses, Stina Ekblad, and the inimitable Polish accordion trio, Motion Trio from Cracow, who will be holding two concerts at NASA. The Icelandic musician Mugison will take the stage with a band to perform new material at Austurbær, and Swedish pianist Anders Widmark and his trio will play a jazz version of Bizet’s
music from Carmen at NASA. There will also be three Schumann concerts on successive Sunday mornings at the Ýmir concert hall, at which no fewer than six Icelandic pianists will perform works by the composer, while the Idnó Theatre will play host to three midnight concerts on Saturday evenings during the festival with jazz and lighter fare performed by outstanding musicians such as Sigurður Flosason, Sólrún Bragadóttir, Benni Hemm Hemm, Björn Thoroddsen and more.
One of the biggest events of the festival will be a grand finale concert by the South African singer Miriam Makeba, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, at Laugardalshöll on May 20. This will be Makeba’s first visit to Iceland, although she enjoys enormous popularity in Scandinavia where her concerts have sold out faster than those of any other musician.
Reykjavík City Theatre will play host to the entrancing Grupo Corpo from Brazil, by far the most popular dance company in South America today, who perform an unusual blend of modern dance with a Brazilian flavour to music from Cuba and Rio.
The visual arts project Site-ations, involving six European countries, will take over Videy island, just off Reykjavík, with six elementary schools participating, and the photography project The Fly will be on view in Reykjavík’s City Library and the National Museum. Other events will appeal to all the family, such as Bernd Ogrodnik’s puppet show, Metamorphosis – Poetry in Motion, which will be performed in Kassinn, the new space at the National Theatre, and of course the French clown, Mr. Culbuto, will roam the streets of the city centre during the opening weekend.
The Polypoetry Festival organised by Bad Taste Ltd. will take place in the Harbour House with dozens of performers from the worlds of the visual arts, literature and music. The Harbour House will also host an international collaboration on space and the environment sponsored by the University of Iceland.
The programme includes a variety of other projects, such as exciting visual arts exhibitions at SAFN and Gallerí i8, and a collaboration by young artists from 14 countries at the Living Arts Gallery and 100% Art Space. And the Icelandic Dance Company will host a feast of dance from four countries at the City Theatre, during which the Icelandic show Marlene will be performed for the first time on the main stage.
Also in conjunction with the Arts Festival, the American public radio show A Prairie Home Companion, one of the most popular programmes in the history of radio, will be broadcast from Iceland’s National Theatre, only the second time it has been recorded outside the US.
To celebrate the 20th Reykjavík Arts Festival, there will a fun quiz on the www.listahatid.is website asking various questions on subjects linked to the festival and its performers. The winners will be drawn from those with the correct answers at the official inauguration of the festival on March 8, and 20 lucky contestants will receive two tickets to one of the events at the festival, while one will also receive a flight for two to Manchester, UK with Icelandair. Icelandair has donated these tickets to celebrate 25 years of successful collaboration with the Arts Festival. The Arts Festival’s cooperation with the private sector is flourishing and the contract with KB Bank will be renewed for a further three years at the press conference. Further information about this year’s festival programme can be found on the Arts Festival’s new website, www.listahatid.is and online ticket sales commence on March 1.
|
