IL DENARO
10/05/2006

Bennato opens 7th European Culture Festival

The Euro-Mediterranean Concert for Dialogue Between Cultures, written by Italian musician Eugenio Bennato and organised by the Mediterraneo Foundation in Naples, will open the 7th European Culture Festival in Algiers. The culture festival will present more than 30 events and will travel around Algeria until the end of the month. Many events will also be presented in Oran, western Algeria, and in Annaba, Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia, all in eastern Algeria. Organised by the Delegation of the European Commission in Algeria and the cultural services of the EU members, the festival has confirmed itself in the past few years as one of the most popular events among the Algerian public with an audience of more than 15,000 during the last edition. "The Maghreb area and Algeria in particular are not Africa but the Mediterranean. I have always worked for a Mediterranean 'collectiveness' and hope that this year's festival can contribute to this togetherness in which mentality, music and culture are so close," said the chief of the Delegation of the European Commission in Algeria Lucio Guerrato presenting the rich and multi-format programme of this year's festival. "Music shows how is it possible to draw together the traditions and cultures of the Mediterranean countries and allows us to pull down that screen of suspicion and incomprehension which is mainly ignorance," Fondazione Mediterraneo president Michele Capasso said about Bennatòs concert in Algiers, which arrives in the Algerian capital after stages in Cairo, Otranto, Luxembourg, Rome, Cosenza, Barcelona, Naples and Lecce. The programme of the festival includes events from 13 EU countries and comprises two concerts of popular music and dances, five concerts of popular folk music, four concerts of classic music, four jazz evenings, two exhibitions and a children's show by Clowns Sans Frontiers. A special event presented by the Czech Republic will be the feature of the 7th edition of the festival - a theatre performance for the deaf-mute entirely translated in sign language. As in the previous editions, the festival will end with a big concert in the open for the young people who can dance this year to the rhythm of Franco-Algerian.