The Cedars International Festival opened Saturday with a concert by the renowned genre-bursting Italian tenor and multi-instrumentalist Andrea Bocelli.
Co-organized by the CIF committee and MP Sethrida Geagea, the concert was attended by a wide array of local politicians and other “social and media personalities.”
A week before the concert, organizers informed that photographers could cover the concert for five minutes but that other journalists had to watch the show on a television in a media room.
Organizers said no tickets were available for local or international media because no one had anticipated that the concert by Bocelli (of whom Celine Dion once said, “If God would have a singing voice, he must sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli”) would be sold out in less than two days. Angry politicians and other notables who hadn’t got a complimentary seat were accommodated by Geagea, who arranged for an extra row to be added at the front of the venue.
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The theme of CIF 2019 is, according to a press release, “struggle.”
“The struggle of the Lebanese people in their country on the human, social and livelihood levels ... because in our beloved homeland we all share a state of daily struggle, the citizen’s struggle to stay and survive and live with dignity.”
Before the concert, Geagea presented Bocelli with an 18-karat gold medal.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
