Cairo

The Khedivial Opera House or Royal Opera House was the original opera house in Cairo, Egypt. It was dedicated on November 1, 1869 and burned down on... October 28, 1971. The opera house was built on the orders of the Khedive Ismail to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. The architects Pietro Avoscani and Rossi designed the building. It seated approximately 850 people and was made mostly of wood. It was located between the districts of Azbakeya and Ismailyya in Egypt's capital city. Verdi's opera Rigoletto was chosen as the first opera to be performed at the opera house on November 1, 1869. But already Ismail was planning a far grander exhibition for his new theatre. After months of delay due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Verdi's new opera, Aida, received its world premiere at the Khedivial Opera House on December 24, 1871. In the early morning hours of October 28, 1971, the opera house burned to the ground. The all-wooden building was quickly consumed, and only two statues made by Mohamed Hassan survived.
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Koubbeh Palace, is one of the various Egyptian palaces which currently serve as the country's official guest house for visiting dignitaries. The... palace was most likely originally built in the mid-19th century and sold to Khedive Ismail in 1866 by his brother Mustafa Fazl Pasha. It is situated several kilometers north of downtown Cairo, Koubbeh Palace was originally surrounded by agricultural fields and rural villages. Under Khedive Tewfik, Koubbeh Palace was a venue for One Thousand And One Night celebrations, royal weddings, and a place where visiting dignitaries admired magnificent gardens. During his son's rule the garden palace gradually came to be regarded as complementary to Cairo's Abdin Palace in terms of officialdom. When King Fouad I ascended Egypt's throne in 1917, Koubbeh became the official royal residence. During his reign, King Fouad ordered numerous enhancements and extensions to Koubbeh, including a six-meter wall around the 75-acre , a new gate and an external garden.
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The Heliopolis Palace is one of the Egyptian presidential palaces and residences for the executive office of President of Egypt. It is located in... the suburb of Heliopolis, northeast of central Cairo and east of the Nile in Egypt. It was built as the grand Heliopolis Palace Hotel in 1910. It is currently widely known as Kasr al-'Uruba and at times Kasr al-Ittihadiya , and is for the use of the President of Egypt. The Heliopolis Palace Hotel was built in the open desert from 1908—1910, while development of the new suburb began around it, by the Heliopolis Oases Company. It was opened as Africa's most luxurious hotel on December 1, 1910. The landmark hotel was designed by Belgian architect Ernest Jaspar. He introduced the local Heliopolis style of architecture, a synthesis of Persian, Moorish Revival, Islamic, and European Neoclassical architecture. It was built by the contracting firms Leon Rolin & Co. and Padova, Dentamaro & Ferro, the two largest civil contractors in Egypt then. Siemens & Schuepert of Berlin fitted the hotel's web of electric cables and installations.
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The palace is located in Cairo, Egypt. Near Abbasyia district at Khalifa Maamon Road. Now it is inside the main campus of the Ain Shams University.... It was one of the royal palaces before becoming the administration building of Ain Shams University. It is said that King Farouk was born in this palace. The university is now located in the area of the Zaafaran Palace, built during the regime of Khedive Ismail. The palace was so named because the area surrounding it was famous for saffron plantations. The palace was used to host the administration offices of the Egyptian University when it was established in 1925. It was used by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for accommodating important visitors. The palace also witnessed the signing of the 1936 treaty between Egypt and Great Britain . Finally in 1952, it came to be used as the administrative headquarters of Ain Shams University. About the history of the palace.
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Omar Sharif is an Egyptian actor who has starred in Hollywood films including Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Funny Girl. He has been... nominated for an Academy Award and has won two Golden Globe Awards. Omar Sharif was born Michel Dimitri Shalhoub in Alexandria into a Catholic Lebanese family. Sharif graduated from Alexandria's Victoria College, where he was reported by his schoolmate Edward W. Said, to have been sadistic and physically abusive in his capacity as "head boy" at Alexandria's Victoria College. Sharif later graduated from Cairo University with degrees in both mathematics and physics. In 1953, Sharif began his acting career with a role in Sira` Fi al-Wadi. He quickly rose to stardom, appearing in over 20 Egyptian productions including Ayyamna el helwa with singer Abdel Halim Hafez, La anam in 1958, Sayedat el kasr in 1959 and the Anna Karenina adaptation Nahr el hub in 1961. He also starred with his wife, Egyptian actress Faten Hamama, in several movies as romantic leads.
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Marina Sarah Warner, CBE, FBA is a British novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer. She is known for her many non-fiction books... relating to feminism and myth. She is currently Professor in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex. She was born in London to an English father and Italian mother. Her paternal grandfather was the English cricketer Sir Pelham Warner. She was brought up in Cairo, Brussels and in Berkshire, England, where she studied at St Mary's School, Ascot. She studied French and Italian at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. In 1971, she married William Shawcross, with whom she had a son Conrad Shawcross; the couple later divorced. Her first book was The Dragon Empress: The Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi, Empress Dowager of China, 1835-1908 , followed by the controversial Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary a provocative study of Roman Catholic adoration of the Virgin Mary. These were followed by Monuments & Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form and Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism.
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Dr. Tarek Ali Hassan , is a professor of Medicine and Chief of Endocrinology at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He is also a composer, musician,... writer, painter, and philosopher. His music, in a modern polyphonic style, has been performed in Egypt and in many countries. Hassan has published major dramatic works in English and in Arabic. Soliman: An Egyptian Drama is conceived as an experimental total theatre experience. He has also published Towards a Philosophy of Pluralism and Complementarity. He was a founding member of the People Not Psychiatry Society, the Egyptian Society for Group Training, and the Friends of the Opera Society. He is chairman of the Zenab Kamel Hassan Foundation for Holistic Human Development, which works on human development and empowerment issues in the Imbaba district of Cairo. Tarek Hassan's philosophy involves a deep belief in that human beings are a unique evolutionary breakthrough. He is a dedicated critic of static models in science, and in the humanities. To him the model of Homo sapiens sapiens is not Achilles or Agamemnon but Osiris, Mozart, and Gandhi.
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Mohamed Fouad Abd El Hamid Hassan is a popular Egyptian singer, actor and songwriter. He rose to prominence in the 1980s when he released his first album Habeina.

Hossam Ramzy is an Egyptian percussionist and composer. He has worked with Western artists like Jimmy Page and Robert Plant as well as with Arabic... music artists like Rachid Taha and Khaled. Ramzy was born into a wealthy Cairo family. He began playing the darbuka and tabla at an early age. He moved to Saudi Arabia for a time and learned traditional Bedouin music styles. In the 1970s he moved to London and began playing with saxophonist Andy Sheppard. His collaborations with jazz musicians earned him the nickname "The Sultan of Swing". In 1989 he worked with Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. This brought him to the attention of artists such as Frank Asher and the Gipsy Kings. In 1994 he returned to his roots and formed a ten piece Egyptian ensemble that performed on the album No Quarter: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant Unledded. Ramzy and his ensemble also gained exposure by touring with Plant and Page throughout 1995 in support of their album. The next year Ramzy released the first of three collaborations with English arranger Phil Thornton, Eternal Egypt.
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Raffi Cavoukian, CM, OBC , better known by his stage name Raffi, is an Armenian-Canadian singer-songwriter, author, essayist and lecturer. He has... developed his career as a "global troubadour," to become a music producer, author, entrepreneur, and founder of the Centre for Child Honouring, a vision for global restoration. Born in Cairo, Egypt, to Armenian parents, he spent his early years in Egypt before emigrating with his family to Canada in 1958, eventually settling in Toronto, Ontario. His mother named him after the Armenian poet Raffi. His father Arto Cavoukian was a well-known portrait photographer with a studio on Bloor Street in Toronto. His older brother Onnig Cavoukian, known as "Cavouk," is also a famous portrait photographer. His younger sister is Ann Cavoukian, Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner. In the early 1970s, Raffi frequented a guitar store near Yonge and Wellesley called Millwheel, where he met other developing Canadian musicians such as David Wilcox and John Lacey. Raffi ran a coffee house at the University of Toronto up until 1980.
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Atom Egoyan, OC is a critically acclaimed Canadian stage director and film director. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with Exotica . His most... critically acclaimed film is The Sweet Hereafter , and his biggest commercial success is Chloe . Egoyan has been nominated for two Academy Awards - The Sweet Hereafter for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. He also won several awards at Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and Genie Awards. His work often explores themes of alienation and isolation, featuring characters whose interactions are mediated through technology, bureaucracy or other power structures. Egoyan's films often follow non-linear plot-structures, in which events are placed out of sequence in order to elicit specific emotional reactions from the audience by withholding key information. In 2008 Egoyan received the Dan David Prize for "Creative Rendering of the Past". Egoyan was born Atom Yeghoyan in Cairo, Egypt, the son of Shushan and Joseph Yeghoyan, artists who operated a furniture store.
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Marika Rökk was an Austrian-German singer, dancer and actress of Hungarian descent, who became famous in German films, notably in the Nazi era.... Rökk was born in Cairo, Egypt, the daughter of the Hungarian architect Eduard Rökk and his wife Maria Karoly. She spent her early childhood in Budapest, before in 1924 her family moved to Paris. Here she learned to dance and starred as a dancer with the "Hoffmann Girls" at the Moulin Rouge cabaret. After a tour that led her to the Broadway and several cities in the United States, she came to the United Kingdom where she acted in her first film, Why Sailors Leave Home directed by Monty Banks, starring Leslie Fuller. In 1934, Rökk was offered a contract with the Universum Film AG in Germany, where she became one of the most famous filmstars of the time, performing in operetta movies like Leichte Kavallerie, Der Bettelstudent or Gasparone together with Johannes Heesters. She had her final breakthrough with a double role in Kora Terry, a 1940 film directed by her future husband Georg Jacoby with several dance interludes quite revealing at that time.
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Guy Béart is a French singer and songwriter. He was born Guy Béhart-Hasson in Cairo, Egypt, to a Jewish family of Spanish, Swiss, and... Russian background. His religious background is unclear, having been referred to as both Jewish and a Catholic. His father's work as an accountant and business consultant saw the family move frequently, leading to a childhood spent in France, Greece, and Mexico, in addition to Egypt. Between the ages of 10 and 17 his family settled in Lebanon where his interest in music developed to the point that he left for Paris to study at the "École nationale de musique". In addition to music, he also obtained a degree in engineering. When his father died in 1952, the young Guy Béhart chose to pursue a career in engineering in order to help support his family, studying at the prestigious École nationale des ponts et chaussées. Simultaneously, however, he enrolled in Paris's École nationale de musique, studying violin and mandolin, and in his spare time wrote songs and worked the Paris cabaret circuit, where he played guitar and sang under the stage name "Guy Béart".
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Yousra is an Egyptian actress and singer. Her birth name is Civene Nassim. She is the sister-in-law of actor Hesham Selim, son of famous Egyptian... football player, actor and former president of Al Ahly, Saleh Selim. Youssra is considered as a glamorous icon for the Middle East. Despite obstacles, she has always managed to pull herself up into the limelight. Recently many people have acknowledged that Yousra has reached a point of stardom where anything she has to say will be heard by more people and to greater effect than even those in authority. She first appeared in the 1980 film Athkiya' Laken Aghbiya . Then she has done many different roles with many different looks. She has done comedy, drama and entertainment. Kasr Fi El Hawaa by Abdel Halim Nasr in 1980, Fatah Tabhath Ann Alhob by Nader Galal in 1977, Alf Bossa Wa Bossa by Mohamed Abdel Aziz in 1977 and Ebtessama Waheda Takfi by Mohamed Bassiyouni in 1978.
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Alan Donald Whicker, CBE is a British journalist and broadcaster. His career has spanned over 50 years. Whicker was born to British parents in... Cairo, Egypt. When he was just three years old his father Charles became seriously ill and the family moved to Richmond in London , where he and his mother remained after the death of his father. He attended Haberdashers' Aske's Boys School and, upon leaving school at 16 during the Second World War, he was commissioned as an officer in the Devonshire Regiment of the British Army. He then joined the British Army's Film and Photo Unit in Italy in 1943, filming at Anzio and meeting such influential figures as Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. He was also responsible for taking into custody the notorious British traitor John Amery. In 2004, Whicker appeared in a successful television series on this topic, titled Whicker's War. In this series he reveals that he was one of the first of the Allied forces to enter Milan and that he took into custody an SS general and troopers who were looking after the SS vault of money. Whicker also shot footage of the body of Benito Mussolini.
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Nikos Xydakis, in Greek Νίκος Ξυδάκης is a Greek composer, pianist and singer. Born in... Cairo, Egypt, he immigrated with his family to Greece in 1963. Much of his music has its root in theatrical music. Xydakis has collaborated with many of the most influential Greek musicians, actors and directors, including Eleftheria Arvanitaki and Sokratis Malamas. His work includes the music for Theater of Thessaly's historic production of Electra. His professional partner is Theodore Gonis.
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