edinburgh festival celebrations

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edinburgh, Mar 29 (Reuters) edinburgh turns this year to a celebration of the exuberance of opera to mark the 60th anniversary of its international festival of the arts, founded in 1947 the dark days of austerity following World War Two.

The festival's new director, Australian Jonathan Mills, said in announcing the programme on Wednesday that he had been working ''at breakneck speed'' to put together an international offering since he took over last October from Brian McMaster, director of the festival for the previous 16 years.

The festival, which has developed into a global phenomenon and attracted over 400,000 people last year, runs from August 10 to a grand fireworks finale on September 2. It plays in parallel with the exuberant and raucous Fringe festival, and alongside festivals of literature, film and jazz.

The operatic offerings are based around the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi.

''I've chosen not an anniversary of a birth or a death, but an anniversary of an idea, something taking root, something being invented, something being discussed for the first time; and that something happened to be opera itself,'' the 43-year-old director told Reuters.

''The origins of opera as we know it today, an art form that continues to thrill and enthrall the world 400 years later, was in fact probably started by Monteverdi in 1607 with his opera Orfeo.'' Spanish conductor Jordi Savall will present a highly theatrical and classical version of L'Orfeo with singers and orchestra from Barcelona. Various themes on Monteverdi and his music will also be performed over the three weeks.

The festival also offers theatre, dance, concerts and visual art, with artists and performers from Japan and Singapore, Venezuela, the United States and continental Europe, as well as Scottish ballet, theatre and orchestras.

The festival kicks off with a production of American composer Leonard Bernstein's Candide, which includes a fierce satire on American life in the 1950s at the time of the McCarthy anti-communist witch hunts, and which has resonance today in an time haunted by terrorism fears and the Iraq war.

A popular part of the festival is the military tattoo, performed annually with kilted military bands and international acts on the esplanade under the battlements of edinburgh castle. The 25 performances this year were sold out by early January.