Auditorium Haifa

High on Mount Carmel, along Ha-Nassi Boulevard, the Haifa Auditorium shares its building with the city's cinematheque and serves as the principal concert room of a port with an unusually long musical memory. The Haifa Symphony Orchestra — founded in 1950 by the composer-pianist Frank Pelleg and the violin teacher Tzvi Rotenberg, and led since by Sergiu Comissiona, Mendi Rodan, Avi Ostrowsky and Cristian Mandeal among others — gives its concerts here. Gershwin and Rimsky-Korsakov have both been heard in the hall, which has never been precious about the line between concert room and public building: film festivals and civic ceremonies use it equally.