The New Generation Festival is an annual celebration that takes place in Florence’s Corsini Gardens, creating an international platform for the finest young musical talent. This year, in response to the devastating effects of Covid-19 on the Italian and international cultural scene, The New Generation Festival will be relocating to the city’s historic Boboli Gardens and Pitti Palace to create The ReGeneration Festival #ReGen, co-presented with the world-renowned Uffizi Galleries and produced in association with the City of Florence.
Running from Wednesday 26th to Saturday 29th August 2020, ReGen is a festival of youth and hope given by hundreds of rising artists engaged by The New Generation Festival in Florence. Stirred by Dostoevsky’s words that “beauty will save the world”, ReGen is an unprecedented four-day programme of concerts and productions, offered to audiences entirely for free; a festival staged by the young talent of the world for the city of Florence. It is fitting that the city of the Renaissance should now set the stage for another to be reborn.
“After the enormous success of the collaborations between the Uffizi Galleries with the Maggio Musicale, with the Musica con le Ali association – which offers two festivals every year in the Sala Bianca – and now also with the Florence Conservatoire which for some weeks has been staging concerts for visitors to the Palazzo Pitti every Saturday morning, now the relationship that the Uffizi Galleries has with music is intensifying and strengthening even more. This is thanks to The ReGeneration Festival: a great event that will enchant the Boboli Gardens during the week in which, among other things, we will have the anniversary of the coronation of Cosimo I as Grand Duke of Tuscany (27 August 1569).” – Director of the Uffizi Galleries, Dr Eike D.Schmidt
The festival’s headline performance will be Rossini’s jubilant adaptation of Charles Perrault’s Cinderella fairy tale – La Cenerentola, taking place on both the opening and closing night. The production’s cast will be led by Svetlina Stoyanova, Josh Lovell, Gurgen Baveyan, Daniel Mirosław, Blaise Malaba, Marvic Monreal and Giorgia Paci. Bologna’s Orchestra Senzaspine will be returning this summer to perform with them.
The festival will also welcome back its ever-popular Symphony Night, with highlights including a performance of the Overture from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb/1 with soloist Erica Piccotti and Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Both performances will be with the Italian Youth Orchestra from the Fiesole Music School in Florence conducted by Maestro Daniele Rustioni.
Maintaining the festival’s founding principle of giving young performers a platform to shine, 2020 will see the Catskill Jazz Factory return to The New Generation Festival for The Three Divas. This homage to the roaring 20s, peppered with iconic moments of Broadway and Hollywood, will be performed by some of the world’s best young jazz musicians including rising stars Veronica Swift and Sam Jewison, as well as Shenel Johns, Anush Hovhannisyan, Yasushi Nakamura, Dominick Farinacci and Dan Tepfer. In addition to the official programming, Swing Bands, Drag Queens and DJs provide late-night entertainment at the Pitti Palace, Palazzo Corsini and other locations across Florence.
The New Generation Festival will stage a unique celebration of creativity that conforms to the requirements of social distancing and follows rigorous health and safety protocols, including temperature checks and obligatory masks. The festival will also encourage spectators to wear original social-distancing outfits and bygone crinoline dresses as magnificent sartorial adoptions of safety measures that marry form and function in the tradition of the great Renaissance carnivals.
To find out more about The New Generation Festival, visit www.newgenerationfestival.org The free ticketing system for The ReGeneration Festival will go live on the website of The New Generation Festival on Monday 17 August.
