Royal Festival Hall Reopens Next Summer

2007 is the year of the South Bank Centre with the reopening of the Royal Festival Hall as its highlight. The South Bank Centre will present a season of celebrations across the entire 21acre site beginning in May and continuing until December 2007.

The programme will begin in May with a major exhibition, the first full scale show ever of the work of Antony Gormley in London, opening at the Hayward Gallery (17 May). The exhibition will feature key works, some never before seen in Britain, and new largescale works conceived specifically for the Gallery, complemented by a series of installations by Antony Gormley in thirty rooftop locations around London.

The Royal Festival Hall will reopen in June with a special concert featuring all four residents orchestras, The Philharmonia, The London Philharmonic Orchestra, The London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, major international concerts by the world's great orchestras, soloists and conductors, the launch of a new London Literature Festival, and a fully staged musical production.

Work on the £91 million transformation of the Royal Festival Hall began in 2004 and includes the restoration of the concert hall itself with new state of the art acoustic control and sumptuous reinterpretations of the entire public and backstage areas of the building. These include the spacious open foyers, new rooftop entertaining spaces, the river terraces and the celebrated ballroom floor, the heart of the visionary design for the building when it first opened in 1951. The work has been carried out under the supervision of architects Allies & Morrison, working closely with the members of the original design team including the legendary designer Robin Day, responsible for some of the key furnishings of the building. -- www.southbankcentre.co.uk