New work in a range of artistic forms will be premiered at this year's 40th Belfast Festival at Queen's later this month.
The city is preparing to party to celebrate the festival's 40th year. Ms Stella Hall, director, said that, in the long-term, new creative works commissioned for the festival formed a key part of the city's bid for European capital of culture in 2008. The festival will aim to surmount "not just physical walls" but the city's "metaphorical and attitudinal walls" also, said Ms Hall, who announced the details at a lunch in Dublin.
The opening concert at the Waterfront Hall will feature the world premiere of a new symphonic work by four Northern Ireland composers: Elaine Agnew, David Byers, Stephen Gardner and Brian Irvine.
Their work, called Sounding the City, draws on the sounds and moods of key Belfast locations such as the Albert Clock, the Ship Yard, St George's Market and the Lagan Weir. The Belfast Carmen is an original large-scale play based on the story and music of Carmen, specially written for the festival by Martin Lynch and Mark Dougherty. It will be staged in the Grand Opera House.
Drawing on the local connection with the Titanic, a new musical and visual installation with music by Ian Wilson, at St George's Church, will set about "raising the Titanic".
Deirdre Gribben will bring Bernard MacLaverty's novel Grace Notes to life in a new music and theatre performance, while the work of two-time Booker Prize- winner, Peter Carey, will be staged in a piece of theatre called The Chance by Prime Cut Productions.
The organisers hope to attract between 100,000 and 120,000 visitors to the festival, which runs from Thursday, October 24th to Sunday, November 10th. It is hoped "thousands of southerners" will travel north for the 18-day event, said Ms Margaret O'Reilly, of the Dublin-based Northern Ireland Tourist Board. "The festival is the highlight of our autumn calender. It's the most extensive and one of the longest established festivals," she said.
"By exchanging and sharing these artists, taking them out into the streets," the organisers hope to create a "city without physical walls" by 2008, said Ms Hall.
"It's a birthday party for the whole city. To have kept it going for 40 years throughout the Troubles is a huge achievement."