Acclaimed Egyptian composer and pianist Omar Khairat will give a performance at the Cairo Opera House on two consecutive days: Tuesday, December 15 at 8:30 pm and Wednesday, December 16 at 11 pm.
The Ministry of Culture has set up two open-air theaters at the Cairo Opera House in July to allow cultural events to resume while maintaining social distancing precautions. However, it plans to keep the Cairo Opera House’s main hall closed until further notice.
Khairat is the founder and conductor of the Omar Khairat Band.
He was born in Cairo and raised in a family of musicians. His uncle, Abou-Bakr Khairat, is a great Egyptian composer of classical music, part of the first generation of such composers in Egypt.
An architect by profession, About-Bakr Khairat studied privately in Paris and founded the Cairo Conservatoire, which is regarded as the premier music conservatory in Egypt.
Omar Khairat, About-Bakr Khairat’s nephew, entered the observatory in 1959, studied piano with Italian Maestro Vincenzo Carro, and took courses in music theory and composition at Trinity College in England.
Khairat, whose music is said to bridge the divide between contemporary Egyptian and Western genres, has composed a number of works, including The Magic Perfumes (1989) and Arabic Rhapsody (1992).
His compositions have been featured in various movies and TV shows and he has performed at the Cairo Opera House a number of times.
