Festival opens in Tver Reg to mark Lemeshev 108th anniversary.

TVER, July 11 (Itar-Tass) -- A two-day festival opens in the Tver
Region this Sunday to mark the 108th anniversary since the birth of great
opera singer Sergei Lemeshev (1902-1977).
The Lemeshev festival is held in Knyazevo annually since 1987.
Flowers will be laid at the monument to the great singer and a museum
will open there this Sunday. A fair of craftsmen will open at Knyazevo's
main street where music will be heard during the day. Winners of Governor
Dmitry Zelenin's grants "Young Talents of the Tver Land" will perform at
noon. A concert will be held near the local river with the participation
of singers from Moscow and Tver. The Lyudmila Zykina Russian folk song
ensemble and four tenor singers, including Bolshoi Theatre soloist
Alexander Zakharov, are expected to participate in the concert. The
listeners will hear arias from operas of Russian and Foreign composers and
Russian folk songs of Lemeshev's repertoire.
"I was born in a musical village," Lemeshev wrote in his memoirs. He
went to Tver to learn singing. With the application from the regional arts
department, he became a student of the Moscow conservatory in 1921. He
worked under the guidance of Stanislavsky, who helped him to prepare the
famous part of Lensky in the Eugene Onegin opera. Lemeshev became a
soloist of the Bolshoi Theatre in 1931 and worked there for about 30
years. He visited his native land when he was a famous singer.
The festival will continue at Theatre Square near the regional
philharmonic society in Tver on July 12. Singers from Moscow, St.
Petersburg and Tver will appear in the "Opera Magic" concert.



.Train of Memory with war veterans to arrive in Kursk.




KURSK, July 11 (Itar-Tass) -- A "Train of Memory" on Sunday will
arrive in the military glory city of Kursk from the Belgorod station of
Prokhorovka, where the largest Great Patriotic War tank battle took place
on July 12, 1943.
The action marking the 65th anniversary of Great Victory began on July
8 at Moscow's Belorussky station. Participants in the action visit
important battle sites of the war against Nazi invaders. Kursk, Ponyri and
Oryol will be visited this Sunday, and the participants will arrive at the
Kursky station in Moscow on July 12.
The train is towed with two legendary locomotives that carried Soviet
soldiers to the front in 1941.
In Kursk, veterans and regional and city officials will join the
participants and together with them will lay flowers at the memorial and
observe a minute's silence to honour the memory of those who died in the
Kursk battle, which lasted 50 days and nights. Then, they will go to the
station of Ponyri and lay flowers at the memorial where almost 3,000
Soviet soldiers are buried. The soldiers died in the fighting to liberate
the station. A meeting will be held at the site.
German military strategists planned that their troops' two "wedges"
aimed at Kursk would join no later than four days after the battle began,
recalls a Kursk battle participant, chairman of the regional council of
veterans Mikhail Bulatov. The "Citadel" operation was planned to be
completed soon, but it failed. The area of Ponyri (where Nazi troops began
the offensive on July 5) was taken by one side and than by the other for
seven times. On the first day, up to 500 tanks and guns with support of
artillery fire and massive strikes of Nazi aircraft stormed the positions
of Soviet soldiers. People lost hearing in the rumble of blasts, and smoke
hurt eyes. But Soviet troops took the offensive at the Oryol area already
on July 12.



.Fidel Castro appears in public first time in four years.



HAVANA, July 11 (Itar-Tass) -- Fidel Castro for the first time in four
years has appeared in public. The 83-year-old Cuban revolution leader
visited the national scientific research centre in Havana last Wednesday,
local woman reporter Rosa Baez said in her internet blog on Saturday.
When leaving the building, Castro warmly talked with workers and local
residents who came to greet him. He stopped, greeted the people and sent
them air kisses, the reporter said.
"He is thin, but looks well and, according to our director, is sane,"
she noted.
Castro did not appear in public since July 2006, when a heavy disease
made him transfer the reins of government to his younger brother Raul.
Nevertheless, Cuban media publish photos of Castro taken when he meets
with heads of friendly states.
-0-pan