This August month will see Edinburgh’s famous festival season get off with the launch of the city’s 3 biggest events. The Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), along with the Royal Edinburgh Military Tatto, and also the Festival Fringe, all officially get underway on Friday.
The EIF kicked-off on Friday with the opera Norma by Bellini. There will be flypasts by the Red Arrows too. On Sunday, the spectacular show Deep Time, set to a specially composed soundtrack by Mogwai band for EIF, with sponsorship from Standard Life, will be hosted as a ticketed free event. EIF running for nearly three and a half weeks (from 5th to 29th August), involves the performances of nearly 2,450 artists, coming from 36 countries. This year’s Fringe festival, the largest arts festival in the world, will have more than 3,000 shows staged. This year’s festival programme covers dance, music, theatre, comedy, circus, cabaret, exhibitions, spoken-word events and children’s shows.
To celebrate William Shakespeare’s legacy on the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s demise, various theatrical performances will be held. The 2016 Military Tattoo will see more than a thousand talented performers coming together from across the globe, to be hosted at Edinburgh Castle. The spectacle under the theme of Tunes of Glory, marks the year the Queen turned 90. The event usually attracts about 220,000 people over its run in August.
The festival will have hundreds of free events hosted across the programme. In total, the festival will host 50,266 performances of some 3,269 shows, across the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, at 294 venues. The 2016 EIF will run until 29th August, whereas the Military Tattoo will come to a close on 27th August.
