The pandemic will not have got the better of the half-century of the most famous Breton rendezvous of the summer.
Opened with great fanfare on August 6, the 50th edition of the Festival Interceltique de Lorient (FIL) ended on Sunday with a
"positive assessment given the exceptional situation"
of health crisis in which the event was held, announced Monday the organizers.
No less than 45,000 tickets were sold, against the 80,000 admissions usually made, during a normal edition of the festival.
Read also: Vieilles Charrues, Interceltique de Lorient… Brittany, land of festivals
With an attendance halved, Celtic nations little represented, a gauge and controls, the organizers had indicated that they preferred to see this 50th edition as
“an act of resistance”,
after the 2020 edition was canceled in the context of the event. Covid-19 epidemic. The big parade, which traditionally brings together tens of thousands of people, did not take place this year in the streets of the town of Lorient (Morbihan). The parade nevertheless
"went around the Moustoir stadium"
where 7,000 paying entries were recorded, the organizers told AFP. This edition of the festival was also marked by the death, on August 13, of Jean-Pierre Pichard, co-founder and first director of the FIL from 1972 to 2007.
While 80 shows were presented in 2021 against 200 in 2019, it was “
a year intended to (re) discover its culture and its exceptional artists, a challenge that the FIL has taken up by offering concerts on three stages
”, recalled the organizers in a
press
release. The 50th edition also ended with a change in the direction of the festival. Jean-Philippe Mauras, former programming director of the Festival de Cornouaille in Quimper, will succeed Lisardo Lombardia on October 1 as artistic director of the Festival Interceltique de Lorient. Already in sight, the 2022 edition of this great Celtic music event will be dedicated to the Celtic nation of Asturias.