Contingency plans, cancellations, and reduced audiences. This is what Lebanon’s summer festivals had to cope with this year in the context of a bleak socio-political and security situation. Although the 2013 summer festival season has been marred by many rippling effects of the war in Syria, the event season also saw many memorable and well-attended performances by local and international artists. The security situation has affected tourism, and where locals go — or won’t go. Lebanon’s grande dame of festivals, the Baalbek International Festival, which dates back to 1956, has been the hardest hit, due to its location in the Bekaa valley, which has been hit by rockets fired from Syria on several ocassions. Baalbek’s stages are majestic. The biggest names in opera, jazz, dance, theater, Arab and classical music have graced the stages around the Bacchus and Jupiter temples over the years; others have vied for it. Of late,
Nathalie Rosa Bucher is a features writer specialising in arts and culture, human rights and environmental subjects. She has been based in Beirut since 2012.
