CARTHAGE — The International Festival of Carthage is halfway through its 60th edition, a diamond anniversary that has brought Cheb Khaled, The Jacksons and Angélique Kidjo to the Roman amphitheater since opening on July 16 with Saber Rebaï's "Taht al Yasmine," according to the program published by La Presse and Kapitalis.
The season, which runs to August 19, reserves about 35 percent of its slots for foreign acts. Kidjo's July 23 concert marked the Beninese star's first appearance at the amphitheater, celebrating 40 years of career; Tunisian singer Yosra Mahnouch performed on July 28, and Spain's Ballet Flamenco de Andalucía dances "Tierra Bendita" on July 30.
What the lineup says
Sixty years after its founding in 1964, Carthage remains the anchor of the Tunisian summer and one of the Arab world's longest-running festivals — a stage that confers legitimacy on rising Tunisian acts by placing them on the same stones as international legends.
But the structure of this year's official program is striking: twenty evenings, nineteen of them concerts, and a single theatrical production — Moez Toumi's "Al Karhmana" on July 26. For a country whose theater tradition produced figures of continental stature, the near-absence of drama and dance from the flagship national festival is a choice, and critics of successive programs have questioned whether Carthage is becoming a concert series with ancient scenery.
The counter-argument, and a middle path
Programmers face an honest constraint: a 7,000-seat amphitheater fills for star concerts, and ticket revenue underwrites the season. Other festivals have answered the same dilemma without abandoning the stage arts — Tunisia's own Journées Théâtrales de Carthage concentrates theater in the autumn, and festivals such as Hammamet spread genres across smaller venues.
The question its sixtieth summer poses is whether the festival should be a mirror of demand or a shaper of taste — and whether a diamond anniversary might have been the year to bet a few more evenings on the answer.