Nadja Kayali is Head of the Year!

We congratulate our artistic director, Nadja Kayali!

Four months ago, the Vienna native with Syrian roots moved to Carinthia, and now she has already been voted "Head of the Year" by the readers of the Kleine Zeitung newspaper. Who is this woman brimming with ideas for Carinthian cultural life?

Nadja Kayali is a " tour guide for music ," as Alexander Kluge aptly described her. Many of you know her voice from the radio. Since taking over as artistic director of the Carinthian Summer Festival, she can only be heard on Ö1's Pasticcio program, but more frequently from the ORF regional studio in Carinthia. Nadja Kayali completed her studies in musicology and sociology at the age of 21 and then embarked on a passionate life dedicated to theater and opera, including roles as assistant director to Christoph Marthaler at the Hamburg Schauspielhaus and the Volksbühne Berlin, as a dramaturge at the Lucerne Theater, and in the administrative office of the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg.

She created her own theatrical works as a director and, since 1998, has primarily staged projects that combine various art forms in unusual ways. As a reciter, moderator, and creator of popular concert introductions, she has frequently appeared on stage herself. She accompanied the renowned string quartet cycle of the Artemis and Belcea Quartets at the Vienna Konzerthaus and performed more than 100 times at the Salzburg Festival between 2002 and 2012. 

Freedom, human rights, and especially women's rights are her life's work. The marvel of law, the constitution, fascinates her just as much as music. 

Since 2022 she has been the artistic director of the IMAGO DEI festival in Krems, which will take place for the last time under her direction from March 5th. 
www.imagodei.at

On July 6, 2024, it will open its first Carinthian Summer under the motto " Personal ".

Head of the Year: Nadja Kayali has arrived, at herself, at the Carinthian Summer Festival, here in Carinthia.