We can already chalk up Angélique Kidjo as one of the most disarming appearances at the 2022 Holland Festival. The Benin-born singer is this year's associate artist, together with German director Nicolas Stemann. On Wednesday 9 March, she acted as a commanding speaker at the press conference with which the Holland Festival opens its public relations offensive each year. It was a welcome sigh of inspiration she brought with her.
Normally they are not the organisation's most exciting moments, these presentations, and this year the mood was extra depressed because of the war. That war is getting closer and closer, and the Holland Festival is directly affected by it. Indeed, the Russian invasion of Ukraine forced a hasty departure from Kyiv of the artist Julian Rosenfeld, who was in the Ukrainian capital filming for Euphoria, the multimedia project that was supposed to be this year's big hit. Emily Ansenk said in her speech that the chances had become very slim that the project, dedicated to the hysterics of consumerism, could be completed this year.
Large productions are a risk
So we'll have to rely on the rest of the offerings for the big festival hits, and that could well turn out well. Lots of crossovers between pop music from America, the Netherlands and the US, opera that doesn't want to be opera and a remarkable amount of text theatre. Not everything equally fresh and new, sometimes unintentionally fresh and new because pieces could not be played since their premiere three years ago due to the numerous lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by the corona pandemic.
Or brings, we should say, because omikron, the variant now prevalent, causes a lot of cancellations, especially for productions with many participants from many different cultures. and let that be this festival's trademark.
Jeangu Macrooy
So there are a few standouts. For instance, the opening show, a concert by Angélique Kidjo, is going to be a celebration for many walks of life. Song festival hero Jeangu Macrooy will perform as the Dutch contribution in an evening that is otherwise supposed to be mainly a celebration of Mother Earth, which is suffering quite a lot from us humans.
Nature, and especially the skewed relationship we humans have with it, is a big theme for this anniversary edition of the Holland Festival anyway. From the hand of the other associate artist, Nicolas Stemann, we get to see Kein Licht, for instance. That music theatre work by Stemann and French composer Philippe Manoury is an adaptation of a text written by Elfriede Jelinek, shortly after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. In an interview, which will appear later on this site, Stemann says: "We made the piece in 2017 and we are now very curious to see how it will turn out, because it has not been played for four years. All the things that were shown in the opera have happened in the world in those four years. A great flood is announced in the heart of Europe. We had that one last year. At the end, billionaires board a rocket to the moon. In 2017, none of that had happened, and now you would think the show is a commentary on reality. I hope that comes across, because when we made it we saw it more as a cartoonish fantasy."
Crazy
The world itself has turned into an absurd opera, where madmen are in power. Angélique Kidjo was asked at the beginning of the press conference if she could still be involved in art now that the world is on the brink of World War 3. Her answer was as simple as disarming: 'There are very crazy people doing scary things. They are not listening to anything. We need art to communicate with the crazy people.'
Stemann later commented: 'Of course, we have to doubt whether we can really reach Putin with this Holland Festival, and probably not even Angélique can get through to him, but the idea is important.'
Good to know
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
