Among the events will be a performance by Hungary's Győr Ballet, a concert by the ethno-pop group Phoenix and an exhibition of caricatures. The programme will start already on New Year's Eve 2006 with a performance by Phoenix and an organ concert, on the largest organ ? with more than 6,000 pipes ? in Transylvania. The evening will also feature performances by the Sibiu Orchestra and the Romanian National Philharmonic Orchestra. A theatre of light by French artists will accompany the music.
During the first half of 2007, Sibiu plans a number of readings, theatre performances, concerts and operas. Productions by foreign secondary schools will be among the theatre performances, and the company of Milan's Scala will be on the opera programme.
The second phase of the programme, to feature numerous open-air events, will start with an international theatre festival. The festival's participants will put on productions in the city's main square, as well as at some of the castles and abandoned industrial areas around the city. On the programme for spring and summer are an animated film workshop, a jazz festival, an exhibition of avant-garde Romanian art, a chorus and dance festival and a demonstration of folk arts and crafts.
In the autumn, an ecumenical confernce of protestant churches in Europe will take place. It will be followed by a photo exhibition, a documentary film festival and a writers' conference. Some of Hungary's greatest living writers will attend the conference, including Imre Kertész, György Konrád and Péter Eszterházy.
Klaus Johannis, who heads Sibiu's German minority, notes that the programme will show the multi-faceted character of the former Saxon trading city. It will also demonstrate the different cultures ? Romanian, Hungarian, German, Jewish and Roma ? that exist side by side in the city.
The Sibiu Association of Hungarians will put on a programme of theatre productions, exhibitions, classical, pop and folk music concerts as well as cooking demonstrations under the title Ars Hungarica during the year.
