Joe GallopFrench culture minister Roselyne Bachelot said the country will host a run of ‘experimental’ concerts in March and April at venues in Paris and Marseille.
Two March concerts at the the Dome Concert Hall in Marseille will each involve an audience of 1,000 seated in the 8,500-capacity venue. Attendees will be required to submit a negative Covid test result prior to the event, and once there will be required to wear face coverings.
The concerts are to be organised by Béatrice Desgranges, the operator of the city’s Marsatac festival.
Pilot events in April at the 20,000-capacity, AEG-operated, Accor Hotels Arena (pictured) in Paris will involve standing audiences of between 3,000 and 5,000.
Tracing app TousAntiCovid will be in use at the event, and attendees will need proof of a negative PCR test result taken less than 72 hours prior to the event.
No date has been confirmed for the concerts but Bachelot told French news channel LCI that they will take place providing the country is not in a “catastrophic health situation”.
The culture minister said she was optimistic about seated concerts going ahead under restrictions and that she hoped to reproduce the model for festivals this summer: “For standing shows, it’s more complicated, that’s why I’m experimenting, and these experiments are meant to really test what’s going on.”