King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima thoroughly enjoyed the Liberation concert, which was back after two years due to the global health crisis.
Their Majesties arrived in the area of the Royal Theatre Carré, in Amsterdam, on the evening of Thursday, 5 May.
The Liberation Day concert is traditionally held on and around the Amstel river, in the portion in front of the theatre in the Netherlands’ biggest city. The public is generally placed on boats along the river or along the banks near the stage, which is built on the water.
For the concert’s great return, the public got to enjoy the music of every genre, from classical music, courtesy of the South Netherlands Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and mezzo-soprano Tania Kross to rap by Fresku, rock by Navarone and pop.
King Willem-Alexander, in particular, seems to have enjoyed Anita Meyer’s Why Tell Me Why and Eric Corton’s interpretation of Dansen Op De Vulcan by De Dijk, with both the King and Queen seen singing their hearts out and dancing to the rhythm of the music.
At the end of the concert, the King and Queen left the event on one of the many boats, smiling and waving to the crowds as they departed.
The concert marks the closing of the celebrations for Liberation Day, which, in the Netherlands, falls on 5 May. The day marks the end of the Nazi presence in the country and the end of the war for the Dutch population.
With the Netherlands being one of the countries conquered by Hitler that also housed concentration and prison camps (my own grandfather was imprisoned in Venlo, a town near the southern border with Germany), Liberation Day is always a poignant remembrance day for the nation.
The country also celebrates the Remembrance of the Dead Day on 4 May; the two dates symbolise the day in which the Allied forces and Germany reached an agreement for the capitulation of the Axis’s forces in the Netherlands (4 May) and the day the treaty was actually signed (5 May). The difference in time is due to the fact that, in a war-torn country, officials couldn’t immediately find a typewriter.
