RECREATION, SPORTS AND THE ARTS
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Among the many distinguished international stars and companies appearing in the festival were the Spanish tenor Jose Carreras, Irish flautist James Galway, the Borodin String Quartet, the Paris Opera Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Other highlights of the festival included traditional music and dance from Tibet, water puppets from Vietnam, Butoh dance founder Kazuo Ohno, a silent film Napoleon, lasting five-and-a-half hours, and an exhibition of New Art in China Post '89. The renowned Camerata Salzburg and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra made their Hong Kong debuts, while New York's Ensemble for Early Music made a welcomed return to present Monteverdi's masterpieces.
The Fantasy in the Arts series examined the important role which fantasy plays in artistic creation. Programmes included the special opera production of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, the ballet classics Cinderella and Don Quixote, the dance Deadly Serious, the Shakespearean play The Comedy of Errors, as well as performances by mime magician Jeff McBride, the Polivka Theatre Company and Velo Theatre.
Hong Kong's most distinguished musicians were presented in a series of four concerts, and The Group of Experimental Cantonese Opera Hong Kong offered a unique reinter- pretation of a popular Kunju opera.
Hong Kong Festival Fringe
Since its founding 11 years ago, the Festival Fringe has developed from an annual open arts festival into a successful year-round operation that gives the emerging artists of Hong Kong the opportunity to hone their skills and create new works,
The 1993 Festival Fringe, staged over three weeks in January and February, was attended by some 300 000 people. Over 200 groups and individual artists from Hong Kong and overseas took part.
Operating from the Fringe Club, the Festival Fringe staff also organised and mounted new shows, exhibitions, workshops and an active outreach programme. The Fringe Club houses two studio theatres, exhibition galleries, a pottery studio with showroom, rehearsal studios, a restaurant, a bar and offices.
Urban Council Presentations
To offer cultural programmes for people of all ages, the Urban Council presented a wide variety of performances by local and overseas artists in 1993. A total of 308 performances were organised, attracting 253 900 people.
Music-lovers enjoyed the classical repertoire of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; light symphonies by the Budapest Strauss Symphony Orchestra; popular favourites by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in the outdoor free concert Symphony Under the Stars '93; evenings of jazz with the Aparis and the Westbrook Trios; the singing of Barbara Hendricks, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the Chanticleer; and ensemble works by the Guildhall String Ensemble and the I Solisti Veneti. There was added enjoyment from the music of a host of instrumental virtuosi, including pianists Emanuel Ax, Kong Xiangdong and Yefim Bronfman; violinists Jane Peters, Gidon Kremer and Isaac Stern; organists Graham Barber and Peter Hurford; guitarist Julian Bream and cellist Janos Starker.
For dance enthusiasts, there was Romeo and Juliet by the Birmingham Royal Ballet; 1980 by the Pina Bausch Wuppertal Dance Theatre; the World Professional Ballroom and