Culture
The city has two theatres – both designed by the Victorian/Edwardian architect and entrepreneur Frank Matcham. The New Theatre Royal in Guildhall Walk near to the City Centre, specialises in classical, modern and avant-garde drama and the newly-restored Kings Theatre in Southsea's Albert Road has many amateur musicals as well an increasing number of national tours. Other venues include the Third Floor Arts Venue in the Central Library and the South Parade Pier, as well as the Portsmouth Guildhall itself, which hosts numerous musical events and an extensive annual programme of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and is on the national touring circuit of well known singers and groups .
The city has three established music venues: The Wedgewood Rooms, The Pyramids and The Guildhall, an imposing neoclassical building designed by William Hill (architect) and based on an earlier design used for the town hall in Bolton. Since the late 1970s only three acts from the city have made the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart: the critically acclaimed indie/rock bands The Cranes and Ricky; plus the novelty pop act Same Difference.
For many years a series of symphony concerts has been presented at the Guildhall by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. In 1979, 1982, 1985, 1988 and 1991 the city was host to a major international string quartet competition, whose winners included the Takacs (Hungary), Endellion (UK), Hagen (Austria) and Ysaÿe (France) quartets. (The competition subsequently moved to London.) The Portsmouth Sinfonia (1970–1979) approached classical music from a different angle.
Portsmouth also runs its own series of concerts encompassing a range of music at the Bandstand in Southsea Common.
The city is also proud of its vibrant south Asian community, from where Bollywood starlet Geeta Basra hails. She was born and raised in the city, where her family still live.
The City hosts yearly remembrances of the D-Day landings to which veterans from the Allied nations travel to attend. The City played a major part in the 50th D-Day anniversary with then US President Bill Clinton visiting the city
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“There is something terribly wrong with a culture inebriated by noise and gregariousness.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says, I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)