Filenews 18 August 2023 - by Dora Christodoulou
After the strong reactions and noise caused by yesterday's exclusive report of "F" about the Pafos Aphrodite Festival and the continued absence of the annual event of the Pafos Opera, despite the restoration of normality after the pandemic, the Mayor of Pafos in a statement assures that the institution is not abolished and that the Pafos Opera will return from the new year.
Phaedon Phaedonos specifically mentioned that no decision has been taken to terminate the institution, nor is there even a possibility on the table to abolish the opera. He attributed, like the sources who spoke in yesterday's revealing report, the difficulty in getting the opera back from this year to the resignation from the institution and the Municipality of Pafos of the functionaries who ran the institution and assured that all necessary actions will be taken to prepare everything in time for 2024, so that in September next year Pafos Aphrodite Festival will return to the cultural life of Pafos and Cyprus.
The leading cultural event of Cyprus in the last fifteen years, the Pafos Opera, has not been organized since 2019 initially due to the coronavirus and the last two years for reasons that have not been clarified, but which, according to competent factors, have to do on the one hand with the disagreements and differentiations that led to the change of the organization's shareholding structure and the general degradation of cultural issues in the city after its period European Capital of Culture and on the other hand with the resignation of the officer responsible for the institution at the Pafos Municipal Hall and her departure from the Municipality.
Revealing information of "F" reports that at a recent meeting the issue of the return of the opera in September this year was raised before the Municipal Council of Pafos, but although initially it seemed a positive climate for the organization of Pafos Aphrodite Festival 2023, in the end it was decided not to hold it this year and the attention of the Municipality to turn to another event with the subsidy of the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
