The ambitious partnership of a festival and a region: the Aix Festival

More than eighty thousand people come to the summer Aix-en-Provence Festival international d’art lyrique which is a festival consisting of performances, concerts and screenings. A festival is defined by a time and a place. The managers of the Aix Festival were obliged to rethink their business model because of a number of factors. These included the constant pressure on the organisation of the festival throughout the year; the constraints of public subsidies; the weight of the festival’s reputation; and the geopolitical situation of the neighbouring city of Marseille. They made the decision to keep the festival in Aix and to broaden its perspectives. Keeping the festival in Aix implies making stronger links with the surrounding region throughout the year; broadening its perspectives means extending its influence to the Mediterranean coast in order to support Marseille’s cultural ambitions. In terms of the future, there are plans to create strong ties between the festival and the region, ranging from reinventing new forms of opera to resonating with the events of the Arab Spring.