The outgoing Prime Minister, António Costa, will travel to Paris on Friday and Saturday to take part in cultural initiatives to commemorate the 50th anniversary of April 25, his office announced today.
These are cultural initiatives promoted by the Portuguese embassy in the French capital, according to information from the São Bento palace.
On Friday, António Costa will attend a Franco-Portuguese concert by the Centenary Parisian Orchestra “Colonne”, conducted by maestro Cesário Costa, and on Saturday he will preside over the ceremony to confer the insignia of the Order of Merit on Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Victoire di Rosa.
The award is made “for his outstanding work on the Portugal-France Cross Cultural Season 2022”, says the note from the head of government’s office, which will later release a more detailed program for the visit.
Started in February 2022 and running until October of that year, the Portugal-France Cross Season promoted more than 200 cultural initiatives in both countries, mobilizing more than three million people, according to figures released at the end of the project.
Inaugurated with a concert by pianist Maria João Pires at the Philharmonie de Paris, the program spread across different French and Portuguese cities, with initiatives such as the exhibition dedicated to Maria Helena Vieira da Silva at the Cantini Museum in Marseille and the Portuguese Renaissance exhibition at the Louvre Museum, the joint project by Pedro Costa, Rui Chafes and Paulo Nozolino, at the Pompidou Center, as well as the programming of different plays by director and playwright Tiago Rodrigues, who this year took over the artistic direction of the Avignon Festival, such as “Catarina e a beleza de matar fascistas”, “Coro dos amantes” and “Na medida do impossível”.
The Temporada Cruzada was the result of a bilateral diplomatic initiative between Portugal and France, with the aim of deepening the cultural relationship between the two countries. Chaired by the Portuguese-French programmer and director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, the general commissioner for the Portuguese side was Manuela Júdice, secretary general of Casa da América Latina and, for the French side, the programmer Victoire Bidegain Di Rosa.
