Some things old, and little that is completely new. Amal Choucri Catta looks forward to the Opera House's new season There is always an air of excitement hovering around the opening of a new season, a feeling of expectancy, of anticipation, even if at times it is overshadowed by equally familiar feelings of disappointment. Such is the nature of things, and this year is no exception. With a total number of 230 performances scheduled, the season begins 1 September at the Cairo Opera House with the opening ceremony of the 14th Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (CIFET). Indeed, the larger part of the entire month of September seems to be dedicated to theatre and dance, with performances by the Zagreb Dance Ensemble from Croatia, and the Bremen Dance Theatre Company from Germany, as well as six performances of one-act dances by the Cairo Opera Ballet Company who will be presenting revised versions of Maurice Bejart's Bolero, music by Maurice Ravel, and Thierry Malandain's Danses qu'on croise, to Brahms' Hungarian Dances. The Cairo Ballet Company is scheduling eight different dances this season: they are all revivals except Mikis Theodorakis's Zorba and the Arabic Al-Leila Al-Kebira, premiered last season to great applause. Among the performances planned are Abdel-Moneim Kamel's version of Cinderella, with music by Prokofiev, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, with music by Tchaikovsky. As usual, Nutcracker, the king of the mice and young Clara's dream of a white Christmas is scheduled for the end of December. Cinderella will lose her golden slipper in February and the white swans will strut their stuff in May. All of which are undoubtedly quite lovely and wonderfully entertaining, but they have been repeatedly brought onto the Cairo Opera's Main Hall in recent years, whereas Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet , Minkus's Don Quixote and Adam's Giselle have been absent for several yeas, for no apparent reason. Since all three ballets have already been staged in the Main Hall, there should be no problems pertaining to costumes or sets. So where is the difficulty in offering just a little more variety? Why are we always presented with the same dances? In previous years classic productions grew at the rate of approximately one new ballet per year; now classic ballet is increasingly being exchanged for modern creations, while Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, Delibes's Coppelia and many more wait to be included in the Cairo Company's repertoire. The same goes for opera. Last June the season ended with a new production of Puccini's Tosca, scheduled again for the new season at the end of October. This does seem to be too much of Tosca for one year. And what about Verdi's La Traviata , scheduled twice and cancelled twice during the past seasons? Both operas are dramatic masterpieces with beautiful melodies. Both have already been staged in the Opera's Main Hall: so why do we get double serving of one and nothing of the other? Audiences would surely appreciate a little more variety in the scenery, and a little more imagination while planning the programmes. Coming January, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Magic Flute will be in the Main Hall. It is a new production, for which a German set and costume designer and a German director have been contracted. In March, with the first warm breeze of spring, Franz Lehar's Merry Widow will sing her lovely Vilya O Vilya in the Main Hall. The operetta is an oldie, performed in Arabic, and in urgent need of a few changes. Then two months later, in May, Verdi's Aida will grace the Opera's main stage once again. After having found her way to the Pyramids in October, her appearance at the Opera has become a must. Here her yearly performances are enjoyed by all those incapable of negotiating the journey to the Giza Plateau. Here she can more comfortable, and more intimately face her fans. But with Aida in May audiences will not yet have seen the last of Verdi: he will be back in June with his the Masked Ball, hopefully bringing the season to a lovely end. Among the sparse foreign highlights of the coming season the Virsky National Dance Company of the Ukraine, scheduled for the end of January, looks like a sure-fire success. With 70 dancers, 20 soloists and a 15 strong orchestra, the Virsky performers have already been enthusiastically acclaimed by audiences at the Cairo Opera's Main Hall, though that was almost a decade ago. Performances of the Turkish Mevlevi Dervishes in October, and the Greek Ballet Company in January, are also likely to prove popular. Among the 63 concerts currently scheduled for the coming season, audiences will have an opportunity to hear the Franz Schmidt Chamber Orchestra from Austria, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra from Switzerland, and chamber orchestras from Germany and Armenia. The Cairo Symphony Orchestra will be performing its usual round of Gala Concerts for Christmas, the New Year, Easter and Spring. It will also be celebrating the centenary of the birth of the Armenian composer Aram Khatchaturian, born in Tiflis on 6 June, 1903, according to some, and on 6 June, 1904, according to others. Whatever, he died, according to everyone, on 1 May 1978. His best-known creations are the two ballets Spartacus and Gayaneh, the latter including the Saber Dance, which has become extremely popular in recent years. Among the many Gala Concerts -- the Arab Perspectives Festival, the 20th Century Musical Festival, the Beethoven Festival, all of which celebrate particular events -- no one appears to have thought of marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of the French composer Hector Berlioz, who was born in the Isere in 1803 and died in Paris in 1869. Surely something might be found amid his symphonies, his chamber music and the three operas, Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens and Beatrice et Benedict, suitable for performance here. He should be included in any season's musical programme so hell bent on commemorations, even if as an afterthought. Cairo audiences will doubtless return in numbers to the regular Saturday concerts, which brings us to the new conductor of the local orchestra. The Cairo Opera House has staged something of a coup, bringing in Johannes Wildner, conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, as head of the Cairo Symphony, presumably for a period of three years, starting July 2003. Negotiations in this respect have been going on, amid some secrecy, for months now. The coming season, then, will have to be considered as a period of transition, the end of one era and the beginning of the next. While anticipating excellent performances audiences will have to expect a number of changes, hopefully for the better, or rather for the best. As for the Arabic Music Concerts, they will still be going strong during the coming season. With approximately 50 concerts, the two Egyptian giant orchestras, the Abdel-Halim Nuweira Ensemble for Arabic Music and the National Arab Music Ensemble will continue their celebrations of the achievements of famous musicians and singers such as Umm Kulthoum, Sayed Darwish, Farid El-Atrash, Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, Mohamed Fawzi, Zakareya Ahmed, Ahmed Sedki and Abdel- Halim Hafez. It remains, however, to be seen, whether they will extend the repertoire to include yet others -- the most obvious being Asmahan and Laila Murad. Performance by Omar Khayrat, Nasir Shamma, Banat Al-Nil, Esmat Abbas and other small bands also punctuate next season's programme while on the lighter side Yehia Khalil's Jazz Band, George Kazazzian and the Yorka Band's Euro-Arabic Musical Medley will offer some relief. Nor are audiences to be excluded from recitals performed by pianist Mushira Issa, harpist Manal Mohieddin, soprano Nevine Allouba, or by Inas Abdel- Dayem and her magic flute. Local dance- theatre companies will be granted a larger share in the Opera's programme for the coming season, and the different Festivals will, as usual, be taking place in one or the other of the Opera's theatres. So what is new at the Cairo Opera House? Nothing overwhelming or extraordinary, yet the place is buzzing with activity: musicians and singers have started rehearsing, new talents are being tested, costumes and sets prepared. Everyone seems to be getting ready for the event. In a fortnight the season will be starting and Beethoven's melodies can already be heard in the foyer. They are hovering in the aisles, lingering in the halls, echoing on stage. After all, we are still commemorating the death of the great master; the Beethoven Festival is not over yet.
