Bloody Hell Prince Finds Australia Has Culture

JAPAN'S Crown Prince Naruhito, for whom music is a refuge, surprised the Sydney Symphony by arriving as a last-minute guest at the orchestra's Tokyo concert.

"The musicians are thrilled, absolutely thrilled," the orchestra's managing director, Libby Christie, said.

Naruhito, who plays the viola and occasionally appears as a guest artist with symphony orchestras in Japan, gets most of his practice in the palace music room, where he is accompanied by his mother, Empress Michiko, on piano.

He met the Sydney Symphony's conductor, Gianluigi Gelmetti, after the performance to a full house at the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall on the opening night of Asian Orchestra Week.

The prince visited Australia in 2002 with his wife, Crown Princess Masako, and was an exchange student in Melbourne in the 1970s.

Monday's royal blessing, a rarity, also started the Australia Festival off on a high note.

The NSW Tourism Minister, Sandra Nori, who is in Tokyo with a trade delegation, said she hoped that with the prince in the audience there would be a spotlight on Australia's sophisticated cultural side.

It would help to address the failings of "Where The Bloody Hell Are You?" - the Tourism Australia advertising campaign which had missed the mark in Britain, the US and Japan, Nori said.

Source: www.smh.com.au