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Song and Dance Festival Every five years choirs from Latvian towns come to Riga to perform at the Song and Dance Festival. These people are not professional musicians. Latvians of different ages, lifestyles and persuasions sing together sharing a feeling of kinship. Thirteen thousand people get up at half past five in the morning for the dress rehearsals. If its raining (and it is often raining at the Song Festival!) they lend each other woolen socks. They help each other to make flower wreaths and iron linen shirts. No one actually remembers the very first Song Festival that took place in 1873 but legends abound.
In 2003 the Latvian Song and Dance Festival, under the title Song and Dance Celebration, was included in the UNESCO list as part of unique cultural heritage. |
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Riga, the Metropolis of Art Nouveau Its easy to stumble on Riga streets if if you don’t look underfoot. Yet some clumsiness is very much in place if you happen to find yourself on Alberta, Elizabetes or Strēlnieku streets. You may lose your balance from constantly looking up and getting carried away with excitement. "Dad stretches out human profiles one and a half storeys high to adorn the corners of his buildings. Women hold out hands made of drainpipe iron (...) with gold rings on their fingers. It was interesting to watch the rain water stream down their perinea," Sergey Eisenstein said of his father, the architect of Riga’s Art Nouveau buildings Mikhail Eisenstein. The legendary filmmaker was born in Riga and grew up in one of the Art Nouveau buildings at 6 Krišjāņa Valdemāra Street, flat No 7. Drop by if you have some free time. |
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Monument of Freedom It's the centre of Riga ― a point of reference in the everyday itinerary for practically everyone. A hundred metres from the monument you'll find the Laima tower clock, the most popular place for rendezvous. Sculptor Kārlis Zāle started to work on the drafts of the monument in 1930. During the occupation years public transport circled the monument. With the onset of the Awakening movement in 1986, it served as an axis for ideas and dreams of a new free state. Flowers and candles are still routinely placed at the foot of the monument. Latvians go there with skateboards (a suitable place for some sporty fun!), young children (there's a slide in the nearby Bastejkalns park!), bread for pigeons and sparrows (dispensed by caring little old ladies), or to meet up with someone (about than two dozen people are waiting for somebody by the Laima tower clock at any given moment). |
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The Latvian National Opera
It's 18.59. A stirring silence. Then the lights at the Opera House begin to dim. Not a single first night performance has passed when Andrejs Žagars, the Director of the Latvian National Opera, hasn’t had to rush down the beautiful neoclassical hallways clutching his head afterwards. Critics play caustic ping-pong in the media, comments by readers follow suit. Spectators of Baroque, classical opera and ballet are always liable to be subjected to a shockingly intellectual "attack" from both the director and stage designer. Innovation minded guest directors are invited on a regular basis. Opening its very first season with a production of The Flying Dutchman in 1919, the Latvian National Opera started on its way to the heights of classical art. Today the opera houses a host of young and charismatic talent. |
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Kremerata Baltica
Whenever Gidon Kremer performs in Latvia, this brilliant violinist,founder of the Kremerata Baltica Orchestra, always briefly addresses the listeners in Latvian. At these moments tears well up in his eyes. Kremer has spent the last several decades in Germany. The thought of assembling a chamber orchestra from the young talent of the Baltic States ― Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia ― occurred to Kremer in 1997. Both professionally and emotionally the plan turned out to be a great success. Playing all over the world, Kremerata Baltica sends a message form Latvia in that very subtlest of languages. |
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The Choir Kamēr... Knocking about, playing hooky from a couple of lessons, a date at the nearby pizza house -- high school kids! Yet the rendition of St John's Passion is one of the most brilliant performances by the Kamēr... Choir of the Riga State Gymnasium No 1. In Europe and elsewhere the choir has been at the summit of fame for several years now. It has been offering interpretations of masterpieces of classical and contemporary music at home and abroad and has won the Grand Prix at many prestigious international festivals of choir music. The choir works in tandem with Kremerata Baltica, one of the most distinguished new orchestras in Europe. If you have heard them in concert in Latvia, consider yourself lucky. Sold out, the posters invariably announce. |
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The New Riga Theatre
The New Riga Theatre (Jaunais Rīgas teātris) is a professional repertory theatre that came on the scene with its very first production in 1992 as a groundbreaker in both form and content. Modern re-workings of the classics and special attention to the trials and tribulations of the people of Latvia are this theatre company’s trademark. |
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Prāta Vētra (Brainstorm) These four tend to be outrageously frisky and mischievous at all sorts of music awards ceremonies ― they just know they are going to skim all the cream from the top again. It's the most popular of Latvian bands! Look at the front man, that boy with the dreamy eyes. Would you believe he's actually thirty and the father of twin boys in their early teens? The Latvian thirty-something generation loves them, they have grown up with their music. Schoolgirls adore them because the foursome are cool, cute and sing about love. And seniors just love them for their high spirits. Early 2006 will see the release of their latest album, Four Shores. Brainstorm has been the warm-up act for The Rolling Stones, R.E.M., The Cranberries, Depeche Mode, Supergrass. |
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The Folk Song Cabinet of Krišjānis Barons
In 1880 a man with a long, grey beard ordered a medium-height cabinet with seventy little drawers in Moscow; the carpenters probably thought: look at this rich fellow, he's probably going to hide his money in there! But what Krišjānis Barons ― for that was him, the legend of Latvian culture (1835-1923) ― actually did store away in the cabinet were 217,996 tiny little leaflets with quatrains. The ancient Latvian folksong texts replete with life philosophy can be read and recited like fairytales, examined layer upon layer, as far as wisdom and patience will carry you. As of 2001 the Folk Song Cabinet has been listed as part of the UNESCO cultural heritage. Now it is available online ― just click on http://www.dainuskapis.lv/ and the seventy tiny drawers will open for you. |
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The Pedvāle Open-Air Art Museum
In the early 1990s, shortly after Latvia regained its independence, Latvian artists became fed up with meeting in the smoked-filled Riga pubs and each other's homes. It was sculptor Ojārs Feldbergs who came up with the idea of adapting a Kurzeme manor specifically for plein air art and symposiums. Pedvāle is a symbol of creative and spiritual freedom in the Latvian art circles. Just mention the name, and you are likely to hear dozens of stories in response. "Have you heard the one about what happened two, no, sorry, three summers ago..." |
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Midsummer’s Eve
Do you have any idea what finding a fern blossom means? Surely the fern is a forest plant that never blooms! Each year on the evening of June 23 Riga becomes a ghost city; the same thing happens to the rest of Latvian cities and towns. Latvians have left for the countryside to visit their friends or relatives. Around midnight bonfires are lit ― it is our way of celebrating the Sun. The sun goes down but for a very short moment on Midsummer’s Eve. You can hear līgo, līgo everywhere - all the traditional Midsummer’s Night folk songs have this refrain. The word līgot means "to sway rhythmically". Midsummer Day is a celebration of fertility and vitality, of the longest day and the shortest night of the year.
And what about those ferns?The mythical rosy fern blossom is said to open only on Midsummer’s Eve, exclusively for lovers. It's a symbol of conscious and creative sexuality. |
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