Prince Albert of Monaco to visit Newport for jazz festival

[Lois Gilbert]

Prince Albert of Monaco to visit Newport for jazz festival
July 20, 2006

NEWPORT, R.I. --Prince Albert II of Monaco will attend opening night of the heralded Newport Jazz festival next month, a festival spokeswoman said.

Albert's visit also will be celebrated with a private cocktail party and a gala event at two of the city's Gilded Age mansions.

His trip coincides with the 50th anniversary of the 1956 film "High Society," which was partially filmed in Newport and starred the prince's mother, Grace Kelly, along with Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong. Albert is the only son of Kelly and Prince Rainier.

Albert was invited to Newport by Brian O'Neill, the owner of the Carnegie Abbey Club, a private sporting estate in nearby Portsmouth that has recently hosted former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton as well as former Soviet leader Mikhail Gobachev.

Albert will attend the festival's kickoff concert Aug. 11 by John Pizzarelli, a singer and guitarist who will perform a Sinatra tribute, at the International Tennis Hall of Fame, said festival spokeswoman Sue Auclair.

Before the show, he is expected to attend a private cocktail party at the Elms, a famed Newport mansion, and will also attend a dinner-dance gala at Marble House the following day, said Linda Phillips, a spokeswoman for the Carnegie Abbey Club.