Issue No. 597
People
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1 - 7 August 2002 Issue No. 597 People |
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Culture Minister Farouk Hosni has announced that Aida 2002 will represent the first cooperative effort between the Ministry of Culture and the private sector Al-Mazalat Foundation for Artistic and Media Production. The opera house will provide the artists and technicians while the foundation will take care of the finances.
The show's cast includes Elena Zelenskaya and Galina Kalinina as Aida, Stephen O'Mara and Ignacio Encinas as Radames, Frank Ferrari as Amonasro, Sarah M'Punga as Amneris as well as Reda El-Wakil as Ramfis and Iman Mustafa as Sacerdotessa.
As an added treat, artistic images will be beamed onto the pyramid of Khufu, which provides the performance's backdrop. Director Abdel- Moneim Kamel will also make use of live horses in the victory scene.
The theatre is designed by Mahmoud Haggag, while the opera itself will be choreographed by Erminia Gambarelli and Kamel. The costumes are designed by Nuria Carrasco. The Cairo Opera Orchestra, led by Anton Guadagno and the Cairo Opera Choir, conducted by Aldo Magnato, along with the A Cappella Choir, will also be participating. In fact, everything you may want to know about Aida 2002 -- including ticket prices -- can be found at www.aidapyramids.com.
Watch out, my dears, for there are good deeds in the air. Under the auspices of Amr Moussa, the Secretary- General of the League of Arab States, the Arab Federation of Youth and Environment, headed by Magdi Allam, in collaboration with the Arab Union for Youth Organisations, will be organising the Eleventh Arab Environmental Camp in Syria this year. Delegations from 24 Arab countries will gather from 4-14 August at Qasioun Mountain overlooking Damascus, to participate in environmental workshops, as well as an exercise in cleaning and purifying Zarzar Lake. There will also be an exhibition honouring the achievements of youth in the field of environmental protection. Hani Mustafa, director of the youth department at the Arab League, will be attending, as will most Arab ambassadors in Syria. Oh yes, and did I mention that Mamdouh Rashwan, secretary-general of the Egyptian Youth Association for Development and Environment, will be leading a delegation of 50 Egyptian boys and girls to this heartwarming and quite important event?
My dear friend Salha Awad, dean of the institute for training and research in family planning, became the first recipient of the Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) Women's Community Leadership Award, recently. The centre, supported by USAID, honoured Awad for more than 30 years of hard work. Amongst those who attended the celebration at the Nile Hilton were regional representatives of the Women Leadership Project (WLP) from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Egypt, as well as Nadia Halim, on behalf of the National Council for Women, Pamela Mccloud, country director of CEDPA Egypt and Mary Jo Larson, the director of CEDPA's capacity building programs, who came all the way from Washington DC.
My dear colleague Silvia El-Naqadi, editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram's gorgeous interior design magazine Al- Beit, celebrated her son's wedding recently, and I tell you, my sweets, I wouldn't have missed an event like that for the world. El- Naqadi's son, Tamer Salah El-Dafrawi, is an engineer at Mobil, and his beautiful bride Yasmine Abdel- Meguid El-Gedawi works in marketing for Carte Blanche. The party took place at the picturesque Al-Qatamiya country club, where a bevy of luminaries, including writers and businessmen a plenty, were present.
On the sidelines of Alexandria's first International Book Fair, currently taking place at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, celebrated poet Abdel-Rahman El-Abnoudi will take part -- today -- in an event that certainly shouldn't be missed. El- Abnoudi will disucss his views on the epic style of such classics as Al-Sirah Al- Hilaliya, as well as recite a few lines from some of his own most powerful works. All this will take place at the grand library's open-air hall.
Meanwhile, Nevine Makram Labib, a good friend of mine, has recently been awarded her PhD in Information Technology by the University of Alexandria. Labib's dissertation was a study of the "intelligent systems" needed by banks for "credit management follow- up". I'm not much with numbers, my dears, but I can tell you that Egypt certainly needs more people like Labib. Congratulations!
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