Vietnamese culture festival moves on from Moscow to St.Petersburg

On Thursday, November 7, a Vietnamese Culture Days festival opens in St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg's House of Cinema will be showing Vietnamese feature and documentary films Thursday through Saturday.

The festival will be crowned Sunday with a gala concert at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. According to a City Hall spokesperson, the gala is to be attended by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's Minister of Culture and Information, Mr. Fam Quang Nghi. It will feature, among others, musicians from the National String Ensemble and the National Folk Music Orchestra of Vietnam. Russian audiences will get a rare opportunity to see and hear a live performance of Vietnamese opera and folk music.

Vietnamese musicians have prepared a special program for the Vietnamese Culture Days. It features works by Russian composers (such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Dmitry Shostakovich) as well as Vietnamese, and also Russian folk songs.

The current Vietnamese Culture Days in Russia officially opened November 4 at Moscow's Maly Theatre. Events within the festival's framework have since then been held at different venues in the Russian capital and also in the Golden Ring towns of Kostroma and Vladimir.