Congratulations to composer Gerald Barry who celebrated his fiftieth birthday in April. A number of performances are taking place in Britain during the summer to mark the occasion, in particular the first staged performances of his television opera, The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit (1991-92), taking place at the Aldeburgh Festival and in the Almeida in London in June and July. The performers for The Triumph will be Almeida Opera with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group under conductor Thomas Adès.

Barry is a featured composer at this year's Aldeburgh Festival and other performances there include the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, again under Thomas Adès, playing Chevaux-de-Frise (1988) and God Save the Queen (2000), the Britten-Pears Orchestra playing Diner (1980) and the Leopold String Trio and Noriko Kawai performing the Piano Quartet No. 1 (1992).

Barry will also be a featured composer at the 2002 Huddersfield Festival and, lest it be feared that Ireland is failing to mark the anniversary, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland will perform Wiener Blut and The Eternal Recurrence with conductor Rumon Gamba and soprano Mary Hegarty on 14 May. A concert performance of act two of his third opera, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (a setting of R. W. Fassbinder's play) is also being planned for September.