Pope Benedict XVI will present the first Ratzinger Prize to three European theologians later this month, organizers said at the Vatican on Tuesday.

The award promotes dialogue between theology and culture at a time of "flagrant divorce" between the two, said Giuseppe della Torre, rector of Rome's Catholic LUMSA university.

The world's largest contemporary arts fair, which opens in Basel Wednesday, is set to receive some 60,000 art lovers to enjoy works by more than 2,500 artists.

The 42nd edition of Art Basel, which displays work produced in the 20th and 21st century, is still dominated by submissions from galleries in wealthy nations, organizers said.

A Prague festival will host the world premiere of Antonio Vivaldi's opera L'Unione della Pace, e di Marte, following its reconstruction by a Czech expert 284 years after its only performance.

"It's a specific genre of Baroque opera, shorter, which is called 'la serenata' and which was composed for a specific occasion at that time," conductor, composer and harpsichord player Ondrej Macek told Agence France Presse.

Renowned Syrian poet and intellectual Adonis urged President Bashar al-Assad to end his crackdown on popular protests and cede power to his people, in an open letter published on Tuesday.

"The Socialist Baath Party has not remained in power this long because of the strength of its ideology, but because of the power of its iron fist," wrote the French-based Adonis, winner of this year's prestigious Goethe Prize and one of the most popular poets and essayists in the Arab world.

An art commission charged with returning Nazi-plundered works has recommended a Vienna museum hand over five drawings by Schiele to the descendants of their Jewish owner, it was reported Monday.

The drawings by Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) belonged to Viennese man Karl Maylander, who was deported to a Polish labour camp in 1941, according to culture ministry documents.

In a musical first, all Mozart's theatrical works will get an airing by the Warsaw chamber orchestra at the 21st Mozart Festival which gets underway on Wednesday, the festival director said.

The festival will thus be "a unique performance" Stefan Sutkowski enthused Monday.

Peruvian President Alan Garcia's plan to build the world's tallest Christ statue has angered local residents who fear the soaring monument will mar the city's skyline.

Garcia, who told reporters he has personally donated $37,000 to finance the project, said the 37-meter (120-foot) statue is a "personal dream."

"To dance is my life," Argentine ballerina Paloma Herrera said as she celebrated 20 years this month with the prestigious American Ballet Theater.

Modest and very un-diva like, Herrara is at 35 one of the symbols of the nation's foremost ballet troupes. She has been a principal dancer since 1995.

The blue-green tinged portrait is a lurid splash of color outside the South African National Gallery, in a nod to painter Vladimir Tretchikoff who was blackballed by the art world in his lifetime.

The poster of his most famous work -- the mass-printed "Chinese Girl" -- is for the first major retrospective of the eye-popping works that earned him the labels "king of kitsch" and a "painterly Barbara Cartland".

Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute on Saturday to the "painful" history of Europe's Roma nomads and called for the community to start a "new page" through integration.

Speaking to around 2,000 Roma representatives at a meeting in the Vatican, Benedict also said that Roma culture had "enriched" Europe but that the community had suffered from intolerance for centuries.