Beirut - The Italian supertenor, Mr. Luciano Pavarotti, made his Arab debut on Saturday night in a concert at the Sports City in Beirut, Michael Jansen reports.
For the 20,000 people who attended, paying $35-$300 for a ticket, the two-hour performance was proof positive that Beirut is well on the way to reasserting itself as the cultural capital of the Arab world nine years after the end of a 15 year civil war. The crowd of local glitterati and litterati was swelled by music tourists from the Gulf and Cyprus, which dispatched three chartered aircraft to the Lebanese capital for the event.