ODES FOR THE CLIMATE

The festival theme of Reykjavík Opera Days in 2019 was „Odes for the climate“, inspired by Greta Thunberg's activism and the Baltic Singing Revolution in 1989. We planned a poetry competition for elementary school children in Iceland and invited them to send us poems about the climate, Nature, their dreams and vision of the future. We received around 400 poems in the end. The idea with the poetry competition was to create a platform for children to express themselves about the climate issues in poetry and music.  We have now, 2 years later, had a few young Nordic composers compose music to some of the poems from the competition and poems from other Nordic children. Those new pieces will be premiered at the concert on the 6th of November. During the concert, we will also launch a new website where the project will continue to grow.