Sutherland to sing at Wellington festival

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 8

Sutherland to sing at Wellington festival

PA Wellington The celebrated Australian soprano, Dame Joan Sutherland, and her husband, Richard Bonynge, are among leading artists to take part in the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts in Wellington in March next year. Dame Joan will open the festival on March 5 in a gala performance with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bonynge. Other overseas participants include the Berlin Staatskapelle Orchestra, the first international symphony orchestra to visit New Zealand in 12 years; the Musica Antiqua of Cologne; and an English actor, Alec Macowan, who will give a

series of one-man presentations as Rudyard Kipling. Highlights of the threeweek festival, the first of its kind in New Zealand, were announced in Wellington yesterday by its chairman, Sir John Marshall and director, Mr Michael Maxwell. The final programme is to be announced in October. Sir John said the aim was to establish a New Zealand arts festival comparable with those held in Edinburgh and Adelaide. The plan was to have a Wellington festival every two years. Other festival events announced yesterday were performances by the Royal New Zealand Ballet choreographed by the expatriates,

Patricia Rianne, Terry Moreland and Chris Jannides; a Writers’ Week with New Zealanders Allen Curnow, C. K. Stead, Margaret Mahy, Keri Hulme and Murray Edmond, England’s David Lodge and Alain Robbe-Grillet, of France; exhibitions of paintings and studio glass; screenings of the epic French silent film, “Napoleon,” made in 1927; and a season by the Wellington City Opera. There would be productions by Downstage, Circa and the Depot theatres; performances by the Wellington and Auckland Regional Orchestras and Limbs Dance Company; and a fringe programme by local: entertainers and cultural groups.