Salzburg Festival's Youth Program Explores Fairy Tales and Climate Change

The Salzburg Festival's "jung & jede*r" youth program seeks to ignite a passion for culture early on, aiming to reach various age groups and introduce newcomers to the festival experience. Ursula Gessat, the program's director, explained that the initiative bridges the gap between young audiences and the festival, bringing their world into the festival's offerings.

From March to May, the program toured throughout the Salzburg region with two mobile productions. These performances, developed in cooperation with local cultural associations, will have their official premiere during the summer festival. One of these is Sebastian Schwab's opera "Holle!," a contemporary take on the Grimm fairy tale "Frau Holle." In Catharina von Bülow's staging, Frau Holle, portrayed by mezzo-soprano Tatiana Kuryatnikova, is depicted as a responsible weather controller assisted by a clarinetist and a hammer pianist. When Frau Holle takes a burnout-induced break, her two chaotic assistants must step in, discovering that controlling the weather is no simple task, requiring a skillful hand and foresight. The opera playfully addresses current themes of climate change and global warming, offering a diverse musical style for children aged 6 and up, in a co-production with MusikTheater an der Wien.

The second production, "Kri," is a play aimed at audiences aged 10 and above, which also toured cultural centers and schools in the spring. This youth piece earned Stefan Wipplinger the Retzhofer Dramapreis in the "For Young Audiences" category. The story centers on Kri, a girl who arrives in a village and chooses a dilapidated bus stop as her home. The play explores the community's reaction to this newcomer, examining themes of rejection versus helpfulness, and how to navigate prevailing opinions and prejudices. Tanja Radovanović, a native of Salzburg, plays the role of the unconventional and courageous protagonist who significantly disrupts the village's daily life.