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Liverpool celebrates The Beatles
Updated: August 26 2010, 19:55 CET
LIVERPOOL: This week Liverpool celebrates the music and lives of the Beatles, with bands from over 20 countries and fans from over 40 during the annual Beatle Week. Furthermore there are live gigs, exhibitions, memorabilia sales, guest speakers, video shows, sightseeing tours and the annual Beatles convention. The International Beatle Week first took place in 1983 and has grown in popularity every year since. Festival venues include the Cavern Club and Cavern Pub in Mathew Street, the Adelphi Hotel, the Philharmonic Hall and, for the first time this year, Liverpool Cathedral.
Liverpool is the birthplace of the Beatles and the city that shaped their early music and lives. Anyone coming to Liverpool for the Beatles should stop off at The Cavern Club on Mathew Street in the city centre. The Cavern was where the Beatles first started out, and although the original Club hasn’t survived, the current Cavern occupies about three-quarters of the original space and houses the original stage. Mathew Street also has plenty of other references in honour of the Beatles, from a John Lennon statue to the Cavern Pub and even the themed four star luxury hotel, The Hard Day’s Night, just round the corner. The childhood homes of John Lennon and Paul McCartney have been faithfully restored by the National Trust. You can see the bedroom in Aunt Mimi's house on Menlove Avenue where a young John Lennon first began writing music, and the McCartney family home, where early Beatles rehearsals were held.
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Edinburgh Festival season in full swing
Updated: August 10 2010, 19:51 CET
EDINBURGH: With the Edinburgh International Festival 2010 kicking off on Friday the Edinburgh festival season is in full swing again. The 53th edition of the annual international summer festival presents visual arts, music, theatre and dance. This year performers from the Americas and the Pacific rub shoulders with artists from Spain, Holland, Germany, Russia and the UK, creating a melting pot of entertainment. The Edinburgh International Festival was established in 1947 by Rudolf Bing, then the General Manager of Glyndebourne Opera, Henry Harvey Wood the Head of the British Council in Scotland, and a group of civic leaders from the City of Edinburgh. Their founding principle - that a world class cultural event, which brings together audiences and artists from around the world, would also generate significant cultural, social and economic benefits for Edinburgh and Scotland - is as relevant today as it was over 60 years ago.
Other Edinburgh Festivals are:
Edinburgh Fringe Festival
This years edition of the major arts festival where thousands of performers take to a multitude of stages all over Edinburgh to present shows for every taste. From big names in the world of entertainment to unknown artists looking to build their careers, the festival caters for everyone and includes theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, musicals, operas, music, exhibitions and events. The story of the festival dates back to 1947, when eight theatre groups turned up uninvited to perform at the (then newly formed) Edinburgh International Festival, an initiative created to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War. Not being part of the official programme of the International festival didn’t stop these performers – they just went ahead and staged their shows anyway. Year on year more and more performers followed their example and in 1959 the Festival Fringe Society was created in response to the success of this growing trend.
Until 30 Augustus
Edinburgh International Book Festival
This years edition of the annual book festival of open horizons and energising ideas, at the heart of Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature, presenting 750 events, 800 authors, over 40 different countries. Among this years guests are Joyce Carol Oates, Lionel Shriver, Amy Bloom, David Shields, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Fay Weldon, Lydia Davis, Jo Shapcott, Alasdair Gray, Ali Smith, A L Kennedy , Alan Warner, Roddy Doyle, Amy Bloom, Andy Stanton, David Almond, Margo Lanagan, Fatima Bhutto, Vidal Sassoon, Garth Nix, Sophia Jansson, Louis de Bernières, Amartya Sen, Nicholas Parsons, and Douglas Hurd. The Edinburgh International Book Festival began in 1983 and is now a key event in the August Festival season, celebrated annually in Scotland's capital city. Biennial at first, the Book Festival became a yearly celebration in 1997.
From 14 – 30 August
Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) 2010
7th edition of Scotland’s largest annual festival of visual art. Ranging from major exhibitions by leading British and international artists to work by a new generation of talent, the 2010. Established in 2004, the Festival works in partnership with the city’s artists, galleries, museums and visual art spaces to present the best, exciting and most intriguing in modern and contemporary visual art. Among this years highlights are Richard Wright at the Dean Gallery and Martin Creed at the Fruitmarket Gallery.
Until Sep 5
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Bayreuth under the spell of Wagner
Updated: July 23 2010, 21:46 CET
BAYREUTH: From this weekend the German city of Bayreuth will be under the spell of the music of German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) again. Sunday the annual music festival of operas by Wagner kicks off. This years program includes: Lohengrin, Parsifal, Götterdämmerung, Die Meistersinger and Das Rheingold. Since the first performance back in 1876 the so-called „Gruene Huegel“ in Bayreuth annually inspires Wagner enthusiasts all over the world. Wagner himself conceived of and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal.
Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Festspielhaus. Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of the theatre, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote.
The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in RWagner's interest in establishing his financial independence. A souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion from Munich, where he had originally intended to launch the festival. In April 1870, Wagner and his wife visited Bayreuth. On inspection, the Opera House proved to be inadequate. It was built to accommodate the orchestras of the 18th century and was therefore unsuited for the complex stagings and large orchestras that Wagner's operas required. Nonetheless, the Burgermeisters proved open to assisting Wagner with the construction of an entirely new theatre. Since its opening in 1876, the Bayreuth Festival has been a socio-cultural phenomenon. The inauguration took place on August 13, 1876, with a performance of Das Rheingold.
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Falcons, Cats and Crocodiles in Zurich
Updated: June 22 2010, 19:46 CET
ZURICH: This week the Novartis Gallery of the Museum Rietberg opens her doors to ‘Falcons, Cats and Crocodiles’ an exhibition about Animals in Ancient Egypt from the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, presenting some 100 objects created over a period of 4,000 years. Animals enjoyed considerable status in Ancient Egypt: admired for their elegance and beauty and feared for their strength, they were above all worshipped, since many beasts were considered vehicles of divine power. The godhead Horus, for example, was thought to be manifest in falcons, while cats and crocodiles were avatars of Bastet and Sobek, respectively. The exhibition presents the fauna extant at the time in the vast expanses of the Egyptian desert, in the water of the Nile, and in the fertile marsh lands.
Museum Rietberg is a museum for the arts from Asia, Africa, America and Oceania. The Museum is the only art museum for non-European cultures in Switzerland exhibiting an internationally renowned collection of art from Asia, Africa and Ancient America. It intends not only to focus on the variety of artistic expression, but also to raise interest and understanding of foreign cultures, views and religions. The core of the Museum's collection dates back to a generous donation of Baron Eduard von der Heydt. Through the long standing contact with patrons, collectors as well as foundations and corporate sponsors, the Museum Rietberg has been able to continuously grow.
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Berlin presents ten remarkable German theatre productions
Updated: May 18 2010, 21:14 CET
BERLIN: Since last week Berlin is celebrating the 47th edition of the German language theatre festival: Theater Treffen. Centrepiece of the festival are the ten ‘most remarkable productions’ selected each year by an independent jury of critics from around 400 plays presented in one season. This presentation of the best in German-language theatre is accompanied by a varied programme of further events: public debate with renowned guests from culture, politics and business creating links between theatre and social and political issues. This years highlights include Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The Hour When We Knew Nothing of Each Other) by Peter Handke, adapted by Viktor Bodó and directed by Viktor Bodó; Der goldene Drache (The Golden Dragon) by Roland Schimmelpfennig; Kleiner Mann – was nun? (Little Man, What Now?) by Hans Fallada and Othello c’est qui by Monika Gintersdorfer and Knut Klaßen. For decades the name Berliner Festspiele has stood for openness, the breaking of barriers and collaboration, for the exchange between different mentalities and artistic forms of expression.
Berlin is home to more than 50 theaters. The Deutsches Theater was built in 1849–50 and has operated continuously since then, except for a one-year break (1944–45. The Volksbuhne on Rosa Luxemburg Platz was built in 1913–14, though the company had been founded already in 1890. The Berliner Ensemble, famous for performing the works of Bertolt Brecht , was established in 1949, not far from the Deutsches Theater. The Schaubuhne was founded in 1962 in a building in Kreuzberg, but moved in 1981 to the building of the former Universum Cinema on Kurfürstendamm.
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