Arts | All stories

In this week's edition of the Arts we look at some of the cultural developments of the past week and some of the festivals underway this weekend.

Those of you who have been to Prague Castle recently, must have noticed the large photographs on display around the grounds. The Summer Shakespeare Festival, which is currently underway in Prague, is accompanied by an open-air exhibition called "Maximal Photography". Twenty-seven enlarged works of leading Czech photographers decorate the castle area until September 11.

In this edition of the Arts we get to see two remarkable manuscripts stolen from the Czech Lands by the Swedes during the Thirty Years War. The first is the intriguingly named Devil's Bible. The second is a religious text in the hand of the great Czech reformer Jan Hus (in Latin but with anti-German jibes written in Czech in the margins). We also learn about the circumstances under which the manuscripts and other artworks were stolen by the Swedish Army in the mid-17th century, and whether there is any chance it might some day be returned.

This weekend, the left bank of Prague's Vltava river comes to life, turning into a little Rio de Janeiro with the Czech capital's first ever street carnival. Numerous events including concerts and dance and drumming classes, hope to attract thousands to Prague's Smichov district from Saturday at noon until the early hours of the morning. A highlight will be a parade. At 3pm dancers and singers in decorated cars bring the rhythms of Salsa, Samba, and Merengue closer to Prague's residents. Petr Nemecek is one of the organisers of the carnival:

Some of you may recall a student hoax a year ago, when a few thousand people, lured by commercials advertising super low prices, flocked to a Prague suburb to attend the opening of a new hypermarket only to find a frontal facade of a building and no hypermarket behind it. A year after, a new film called Cesky Sen - Czech Dream - has come out telling the story of the two students from the Czech Film Academy - Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak - who first hired image experts to appear as top managers and then commissioned a leading advertising agency

My guest in today's Arts is the British jazz guitarist and singer James Harries, who now makes his home in Prague. When I spoke to him on the phone before our interview, James said he couldn't make it to the Radio Prague studio until late in the day as he was going to spend all night recording. When James Harries came into our studio, I couldn't resist first asking him if that was really the case.

Last weekend, the normally tranquil grounds of the Bohnice mental hospital erupted to life for the annual Mezi ploty festival of music, theatre and art. The festival in Prague was just part of many activities across the Czech Republic - all to break down social taboos and raise money for the under-funded and misunderstood field of psychiatry.

Miro Smolak has raised the ire of many in the Czech art establishment with his grandiose idea to build a Palace of Art. The gallery is to house an extensive collection of works by the Spanish surrealist, Salvador Dali. The idea of having a Dali gallery has made for headline grabbing news, but what has been discussed less is how Miro Smolak landed one of the biggest names in architecture, Daniel Libeskind, to design the project.

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2004 is the Year of Czech Music and the Prague Spring International Music Festival has taken that into account, concentrating on the world-renowned Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. During the festival Prague audiences will get to hear all nine of Dvorak's symphonies, including the rather underestimated first four symphonies. The festival always concludes with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 but this year's closing concert on June 2nd will feature Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" instead.