Keep taking the vitamins, culture fiends: when you've drawn breath from this weekend's Dublin Writers' Festival, and taken in next week's Cork Midsummer Festival and the Lyric FM Gerald Barry Festival, Hannover beckons. There, it will be Ireland's turn under the spotlight at EXPO 2000, from Monday June 26th. So far, German audiences have not exactly been storming the EXPO pavilions, but maybe the prospect of the RTE Concert Orchestra, Bacchanal's daily street theatre performances and poetry and music from Dermot Healy, Eavan Boland and Frank Hart will change all that.
On Wednesday, June 28th, Ireland's "national day" at the EXPO, the RTE Concert Orchestra will present a showcase of Irish music, including Donal Lunny and sean nos singer Roisin Elsafty. Lord Edward's Own Narraghmore Pipe Band will tune up in the afternoon, followed by Dervish. Padraig Breathnach will be teaching visitors "how to say hello in Irish" from a mobile outdoor stage - somehow, this is unlikely to be Trom agus Eadrom revisited. Vinny Murphy's rigorously contemporary film of urban life, Accelerator, will be screened in the evening, followed by an animated film based on Brian Keenan's Lebanon experience, From an Evil Cradling, directed by Andrew Kavanagh and Keith Foran and narrated by Brian Keenan.
More information on all the events in the five-month Irish cultural programme are available from Portal, a cultural newsletter which will be distributed free to visitors to the Irish pavilion. The first edition, edited by poet Pat Boran, includes new writing, with German translations, from John McGahern, Paula Meehan and Peter Sirr, articles by Fintan Vallely and Hugh Linehan, and an interview with Philip Casey. Four more issues are in the pipeline, and it's also available from: www.expo2000.ie and www.eventguide.ie/portal
Attempting to summarise the plot of Wagner's Ring Cycle is a late-night party game guaranteed to leave everybody flummoxed. No problem to the Irish tenor, Paul McNamara, who has just won the British-based Wagner Society's 2000 Bayreuth Bursary competition. The prize will bring him an all-expenses-paid trip to Bayreuth for this year's productions of Lohen grin, Die Meistersinger and Parsifal. He will also receive free coaching for an all-Wagner programme at the Conway Hall in London on Wednesday, November 22nd. His next Irish performance is at the National Concert Hall on Sunday (in Mendelssohn's Elijah), and he can also be heard at events at the Anna Livia International Opera Festival, a fringe recital at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre next Monday and in the young singers' line-up for the gala operatic recital at the Gaiety Theatre on Wednesday next.
Finally, it's time to break out the burgundy and gorgonzola in memory of the author of Ulysses. Tomorrow's Bloomsday events in Dublin include free open-air performances of excerpts from the novel, throughout the day, at the James Joyce Centre, North Great George's Street, and around the streets and pubs of the city centre. Anyone allergic to revellers in Edwardian dress has been warned . . .
Kidneys and stout are on the menu at the Guinness Bloomsday Breakfast, which begins at 8 a.m. in the Joyce Centre; Ken Monaghan's Bloomsday Lecture and walking tour through Joyce's Dublin begin at 2.30 p.m.; and a performance of the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses will take place in the Ormond Hotel, Ormond Quay at 8 p.m. Further information on all events from: 01-8788547.
Cork has also joined in - in honour of Joyce's father, John, presumably - with celebrations and readings from Eamonn Sweeney, Antonia Logue and playwright Raymond Scannell. That's all at The Vineyard on Market Lane, starting at 5.30 p.m.
For The Irish Times Bloomsday site, see: www.ireland.com/literature/ dyoublong/
