Edinburgh Fringe Opens This Weekend, 9 Aug
Date: 7 August 1998
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe opens this weekend in the Scottish capital. The Fringe, which runs this year from 9 August to 31 August, is the biggest part of “the world's largest arts festival” which now incorporates seven different festival events staged in Edinburgh from 31 July to 5 September 1998. These include a book festival, jazz and blues festival, contemporary arts festival, film festival and a military tattoo. More than two million people are expected to visit the festival city over the six-week period.
This year's Fringe, now in its 51st year, comprises 9,810 performers staging 16,141 performances of 1,309 shows - from music to theatre, opera, dance, visual and performance art, discussions and children's events - in 164 venues. In all, the Fringe will run for 552 combined hours, with a performance beginning every two minutes.
Amongst those, there will be nearly 500 theatre productions and over 300 world, European and British premieres. Some major stage events include the world premiere of Labels by Louis de Bernieres, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shephard s Shaved Splits in its European debut and Dario Fo s Tale of the Tigress in its first British production.
The eclectic Fringe programme also includes a vast number of comedy, classical and popular music, opera, ballet, dance and street theatre events.
The Fringe's more upmarket parent, the Edinburgh International Festival, opens next week. It runs from 16 August to 5 September and will include some 170 performances, ranging from the UK premiere of Balanchine's ballet A Midsummer Night's Dream to concerts of Scottish harp music and a two-week residency of the Royal Opera performing Verdi operas based on Schiller texts.
For more information on Edinburgh - the festival, the programme and the city - visit our special What's On Stage Edinburgh section. And check back later in August when What's On Stage will be reporting live from the Edinburgh Fringe.
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