* Under the auspices of Mrs Suzanne Mubarak, the Spanish Embassy, in cooperation with the Cairo Opera House and Cervantes Institute, the famous Spanish mezzo soprano Teresa Berganza is due to feature two concerts on 9 and 13 May at the Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 9pm. Berganza will perform some of the classic arias accompanied by Julio Alexis Muñoz on piano and cellists Joseph Bassal and Wolfgang Lehner. Berganza is one of the living legends of bel canto. Singing for more than 50 years in the most important opera theatres, she performed for world-renowned directors like Zeffirelli, Ponelle, Rennert and Strehler and conductors such as Abbado, Böhm, Ozawa. She left her mark with unforgettable interpretations of Zerlina, Cherubino, Dorabella, Rossina, Angelina and Carmen. * Film star Omar Sharif celebrated his birthday with friends and family at the Mövenpick Hotel Cairo-Media City. Present at the garden area were Mohamed Khairi, Mohsen Ahmed, Sawsan Badr, Madlin Tabar, Madiha Hamdi and ART satellite channel presenter Pousi Shalabi. To mark the occasion, hotel executive chief Christian Amislon created a unique cake decorated with film stills. * The Faculty of Engineering at Ain Shams University held the welcome ceremony of EYE 07, the second annual conference on the Integration of Economy and Engineering. EYE is a student-to-student conference designed to facilitate the transition from an engineering concept to project implementation, fund raising and marketing. Through EYE, participants join one of four eight-session workshops (Marketing Council, Financial Council, Technical Council and Entrepreneurship) culminating in the presentation of projects to investors and professionals for evaluation, and eventually managing to see their dreams come true. The idea is equally about producing a new generation of able organisers, however, which is why the event is organised by students as well. Present were the 224 participating students and 65 student organisers as well as Chairman of the Egyptian Company for Railway Projects and Transportation Ismail Osman, who spoke about the link between engineering and economy. * Young architect and designer Shahira Hamed Fahmi is the first Egyptian to be invited to Salone Satellite, the fringe of Milan's annual furniture fair, the 10th round of which showcases the work of 500 designers from 38 countries this year. Fahmi 's work was commended by Rachel Spence in The Financial Times as "a perfect marriage of contemporary and classic style equally suitable for a penthouse or a palace". Her fields of design range from urban scale to products, interiors and furniture. Fahmi won the Bibliotheca Alexandrina competition for young architects for a residential project in Cairo in 2005, and the Medina Design Excellence award for furniture, which was presided over by international juror Ingo Maurer in 2000. * It seems that art is everywhere this spring. The Society for Aiding Female Inmates, presided over by Nawal Mustafa, organised an exhibition entitled "Flowers" at El-Sawy Culture Wheel, revenues of which will go towards the society's work. The exhibition included 80 paintings by Amr Fahmi, Walid Aouni, Ibrahim Abdel-Malak, Ibrahim Ghazala, Mohamed Nasr, Mohamed Tarawi and Sayed Saadeddin, expressing their perspectives on spring. At the Gezira Art Centre, at the same time, Nermine Hakim, Meriam Hathout and Awad El-Sheimi are showing 100 paintings reflecting on the Egyptian environment. Present at the opening were Al-Ahram writers Afkar El-Kharadli and Amal Bakir as well as Neam El-Baz from Al-Akhbar. * At the Bibliotheca Alexandrina's Science Village, the environment was the subject of the first round of the Science Festival, an unprecedented event in which Planetarium Science Centre Hoda Almekaty coordinated lectures and discussions by a host of local and foreign specialists. The Innerwheel Club, headed by Wafaa El-Helali, organised a charity fashion show by Italian designer Raffaella Curiel. Present was Italian Ambassador to Cairo Antonio Badini. Egyptian actors Mohamed Abdel-Hafez, Ghada Adel and Samiha Ayoub, director Ismail Abdel Hafez, Hisham Selim and script writer Osama Anwar Okasha, pose for a picture during a press conference held to announce the new TV serial Al-Masrawiyah (The Egyptians) in Cairo. Starting this year, 30 episodes will be shown each Ramadan for a period of five years.
