GrowOP! 2019 - Den Jyske Opera

Presentation

GrowOP! Is an International opera festival for young audiences. The only opera festival in Denmark entirely dedicated to the encounter between opera and children and youth. GrowOP! rethinks opera as a modern and inclusive art form for children and youth, creating work in unexpected places and in new ways. Artistic quality has the highest priority and all parts of the program are curated and created with special focus on relevance, innovation and sustainability. The festival started as a strategic project under Aarhus 2017 – European Capital of Culture. The festival was awarded as ”Innovation of the year” by Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). The festival offers International and Danish performances of the highest quality with focus on performances that override language barriers or build on non verbal communication.

In 2019 the festival will include an expanded, physical space, the “Opera Exploratorium” An outdoor and indoor interactive space connecting performances physically and with activities that are connected to the performances thematically or to the artform of opera in general: Building set models, Singing, Shouting, Playing music, Dressing up, Making films, MakeUp and more than anything exploring opera through play. Besides families coming for an opera weekend experience the festival targets schools and preschool institutions on the weekdays with a range of introductory participatory workshops opening the doors to opera experiences that may be conveyed in languages that the children don’t speak themselves.

Artistic Team

GrowOP! is a carefully curated festival and all productions invited to the festival have been experienced at first hand. Main curator is Festival Director Birgitte Holt Nielsen who, with her long experience as a singer, producer and librettist in the field of Opera for Children and educational work, is a guarantee that the productions invited to GrowOP! are of the highest artistic standard with relevance for the intended age group.

Presenting the whole range of highly talented artistic teams behind the productions at GrowOP! Festival is too extensive. But in order to give an idea of the international profile, a few examples can be mentioned here: “Hjertelyd”, produced by Den Jyske Opera: Composer Sam Glazer and librettist /stage director Zöe Palmer (UK), Tanja Bovin (Set designer, DK), “Var är du, Proserpin”. produced by Opera Verkstan at Malmö Operan (S), Maria Sundqvist, Artistic Director and Stage Director, “Vølvens Dom”, Nordic Music Theatre Saum, Composer Hugi Gudmonsson (Iceland), Ingeborg Fangel Mo (artistic director and singer). Besides these few examples there are artistic teams behind 5 other productions all in all comprising mores than 20 highly talented artists from all over Europe.