Musical adventures and discoveries

©️ SF/Marco Borrelli

Out into the country to perform for children and teenagers throughout the entire state of Salzburg – that is the motto of the tour From Abtenau to Zell am See, which the Salzburg Festival’s youth department presents this summer for the fourth time. In March, April and May, two mobile productions are presented in 20 school performances in 15 towns, in cooperation with cultural centres and schools. During the summer, these offerings are complemented by a children’s opera and youth camps.

Throughout the spring, sets, costumes and props from the Festival studios were packed up and transported to Hallein, Abtenau, Neukirchen, Bischofshofen and Seekirchen, together with the artistic and technical staff who bring music and theatre to young local audiences. “These mobile productions enable us to reach a large and very diverse group of children and teenagers. School performances in your own village, for your entire class, open the doors into the theatre for a broader young audience which might not have access to cultural offerings through their families,” says Ursula Gessat, manager of the youth programme jung & jede*r.

While last year, stories about friendship, hope and courage were the focus of the Salzburg Festival’s youth programmes, this season features unusual journeys through time and homages to friendship and love. In the mobile play Liebe Grüße … oder Wohin das Leben fällt, children from the third and fourth elementary school grades join the main character Mo on a journey through time, during which he meets his own mother as a child. They learn more about their family’s history and even uncover a secret. The musical theatre production Zeitzone JETZT features songs by Bach, Mozart and Schubert, allowing children and teenagers aged 10 and up to discover how feelings can mess up a strict timetable.

Of course both pieces are also part of the summer programme of jung & jede*r, presented at the Schauspielhaus Salzburg, which turns into the venue for the youth programmes in July and August. Starting on 26 July, the children’s opera Die Kluge by Carl Orff, based on the fairy-tale The Clever Farmer’s Daughter by the Brothers Grimm, will be shown here. The new version of the libretto by Armela Madreiter is tailored to a young audience: eight singers, an actress and a 15-piece orchestra consider questions of law and injustice, power and powerlessness.