In These New Times

Franklin Lamb

Counterpunch

7th January, 2013

Easy walking distance from this observer’s hotel near the city center, the Damascus Opera House, the site of yesterday’s Presidential  address, was inaugurated in May of 2004 by the President and his wife, 
completing a project of his late father, Hafez, who actually planned the 
opera house in detail, but which had been put on hold since the late 1970’s.  
Located off Umayyad Square, the multipurpose culture center complex, 
presented its most recent opera, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s, The Marriage 
of Figaro, just months before the current crisis erupted.