Ron Jacobsohn Attends the Media Preview for the Masada Opera Festival

Returning to the lowest place on the face of the earth, the Israeli Opera Festival, is going to held this coming June at Masada for the 4th time featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, directed by world renowned director, Michal Znanieki, and his team. We attended the media preview of this major cultural event in this year’s Israeli calendar. Even before the official launch of the event, over eleven thousand tickets have already been sold, over half of them to what classifies as “cultural tourists”, who plan to come Israel especially for the festival.

Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
Returning to the lowest place on the face of the earth, the Israeli Opera Festival, is going to held this coming June at Masada for the 4th time featuring Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata, directed by world renowned director, Michal Znanieki, and his team. We attended the media preview of this major cultural event in this year’s Israeli calendar.

Israeli Minister of Tourism, Dr. Uzi Landau, is extremely proud with the growing numbers of tourists to Israel under his leadership and hopes that future attractions like the Opera in Masada will lure more tourists to come to visit the holy land.

Dr. Uzi Landau, Israeli Minister of Tourism:
It’s a special event for cultural tourism, for those who are going to combine with this backdrop of Masada that has its roots in thousands and thousands of years of history, of a beautiful legacy with scenery that is unmatched. It’s going to be, I believe the fourth event in which operas are brought up and played there and Israel is already becoming a major players on the international scene, we have had this year 3.5 million tourists, we would like to see a number of percent growth, I believe we might have another one to two additional percentages this year.

The CEO of the Israeli Opera, Hana Munitz, love to tell everyone how her team builds every year from scratch a little town in the middle of nowhere in order to create the spectacle of the Opera on top of mount Masada.

Hana Munitz, CEO, Israeli Opera:
When we started this festival in Masada, we had to build a full city because we came to a desert, there was nothing. On the one hand you had Masada on the mountain, on the other hand you have the Dead Sea, the lowest place in Israel and the world actually, and in the middle between them – a desert with nothing in it, so we had to build roads to get to start to do something there, to bring water pipes, electricity, everything. We build a tribune for 7500 seats every night and the stage, the stage is 68 meters wide and the opening of the stage is 68 meters so it’s something that we had to build from scratch. We have 250,000people working on this project for several months every year; building the area, and then in the end we have 700 people performing on stage including; singers, dancers, an orchestra and a chorus, all of that is in order to make this place, the Negev, the south of Israel thrive and bring in tourists to give life to this magnificent, heroic place of Masada. Every Year, it brings 18 Million Shekels into the economy in Israel, mainly from hotels, buses, taxies etc, etc. So it’s a project that not only brings culture to this country but also improves the economy here.

Idan Raichel, who has long accepted the fact that his musical project has become the world ambassador of Israeli music, will also perform during the Masada spectacle with 92 of his band members on stage.

Idan Raichel, World Music Performer:
It’s a very unique band, for those viewers who are not familiar with the Idan Raichel Project, it’s a musical project that I’ve recorded back home in Kfar Saba,over 95 musicians and singers, the youngest member in the project is 16, and the young spirits are 83 and 91 years old. Over 95 musicians from different places around the world, we are not touring with 95 musicians and singers but we have on stage always between 14 to 18 amazing musicians and singers, very versatile, from acoustic influences to electric influences, from singers from Tel-Aviv, and singers that were born in the refugees camps in Sudan or Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, guitar players from Morocco or percussion Rio de Janeiro, so I think that this band reflects the multi ethnic sounds that you can find here. As a World Music artist, you know, we’re doing Israeli music but world music artists have the privilege to score, to write the soundtrack of the place that they came from. If people listen to my music around the world, take it as the soundtrack of Israel in the past decade, for me it’s the biggest compliment.

Ron Jacobsohn, JN1 Correspondent:
Even before the official launch of the event over eleven thousand tickets have already been sold, over half of them to what classifies as “cultural tourists”, who plan to come Israel especially for the festival.
For JN1 I am at the Israeli Opera House in Tel-Aviv.

About Ron Jacobsohn

World renowned, award winning, correspondent, Ron Jacobsohn, brings from his very entertaining world to Ron's World.

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