The UK team behind The New Generation Festival announces The Regeneration Festival 2020, a free four-day festival in Florence, staged by some of the world’s finest young talent and co-presented with the Uffizi Galleries. Taking place at the end of August, the festival will breathe optimism and music into a city hard-hit by the Corona Virus, and will reinvigorate Italy’s cultural calendar once more.
Organised by three young Brits, 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, 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.
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 as well as the return of NGF’s ever-popular Symphony Night with highlights including Overture from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb/1 and Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 by Ludwig van Beethoven.Both performances will bewith the Italian Youth Orchestra from the Fiesole Music School in Florence. Maintaining the festival’s founding principle of giving young performers a platform to shine, 2020 will see the Catskill Jazz Factory return for The Three Divas, a homage to the roaring 20s performed by some of the Worlds best young jazz musicians and rising stars. 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
