A major free opening event, a new theatrical version of Alasdair Gray's landmark novel Lanark, Antigone with Juliette Binoche, folk and pop music, new venues and a series of new directions will all be part of the world's most prestigious arts festival in Edinburgh this summer.

New director Fergus Linehan, in his debut year, has made an instant mark on the Edinburgh International Festival programme, with gigs by Sparks, King Creosote and Franz Ferdinand, a new amplified music venue at the festival's Hub and, he says, a new emphasis on the individual artist.

The EIF - which launched its classical concert programme earlier this year and has already re-aligned its dates with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe - today outlines its theatre, opera, popular music and dance programme.

Making their first appearances at the Edinburgh International Festival this year are Binoche, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Lang Lang, Sufjan Stevens, Sylvie Guillem, Franz Ferdinand & Sparks, Max Richter, Simon McBurney, Enda Walsh and Yuja Wang.

The EIF this year stages new productions from Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, Complicite and Simon McBurney, Enda Walsh and Donnacha Dennehy, Ivo van Hove and Anne Carson, the Citizens Theatre, Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant.

Overall, the festival will feature more than 2,300 artists from 39 nations.

Lanark is being produced by the Citizen's Theatre and written and directed by David Greig and Graham Eatough.

The landmark novel published in 1981, considered among the finest Scottish books of the late 20th century, has been adapted for the stage before, but Linehan, speaking to The Herald ahead of the launch, said new technology could allow for the book's more fantastical elements to be staged in a new way.

Of the Lanark production, Linehan said: "I chose to stage it because it is an audacious Scottish project, and the people behind it are really, really strong artists, and it's a great festival project, and because I love the book.

"But it is a troubled book, and it did trouble me.

"It is not a perfect book, it is structurally sprawling and has some incredibly random sections. But at the same time, it really struck me as really capturing a place.

"Its polymathic thinking really struck me.

"We don't know how long it will end up being or what the structure will be, but structurally a festival is the right environment to develop it.'

Linehan said this year's festival theme, if there was one, was that of the individual artist.

This year the programme for the festival, which under predecessor Sir Jonathan Mills often illustrated a theme for the year's events, has portraits of different artists appearing in the festival taken by Scottish photographer Gavin Evans.

Each of the eight portraits - Nicola Benedetti, Juliette Binoche, Iván Fischer, Alasdair Gray, Robert Lepage, Simon McBurney, Jason Moran and Anne-Sophie Mutter - is used in a series of different brochure covers.

Linehan said: "Curation follows the art, not the other way around.

"I think what the EIF does is provide the platform and resources and the time for artist who are working in a particular way and in a certain moment of their career, to be able to present work.

"I felt that artists are what the festival is: we don't have a theatre, we don't have a company of actors or musicians - what we actually have is a blank piece of paper and a particular context in which to work.

"We only exist in the imagination of artists and what they present - so this is an attempt to acknowledge that really."

The festival will open with a major free event outside the Usher Hall when a digitally animated artwork is projected onto the front of the landmark venue, set to music.

The Harmonium Project will be staged by. 59 Productions.

It will set a recording of the Festival Chorus - celebrating its 50 year anniversary - the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and principal conductor Peter Oundjian performing John Adams's Harmonium to the visuals.

Linehan said he is nervous about whether people will come to event kicks off the festival, which runs from August 7 to 31: "This is the nightmare of free events.

"You never know. With anything else you either sell tickets in advance or you won't sell tickets in advance, but at least you know.

"Experience would tell me that yes, people will show up, and in large numbers. You worry that no one will show up and simultaneously worrying that too many people will show up. I guess the first person who decided to send some fireworks off the castle walls had the same conundrum.

"I believe in the ritual of openings and closings and its a natural moment to be able to celebrate.'

The festival will see works for young people, including Dragon by Vox Motus, the National Theatre of Scotland and Tianjin People's Arts Theatre and a family concert the day before the Virgin Money Fireworks Concert.

One major departure will be the Hub Sessions, which will use the main auditorium at the festival's offices at the top of the Royal Mile for concerts and performances of "jazz, alternate, folk influenced and fusion music".

Artists appearing include Chilly Gonzales featuring Kaiser Quartett, Robert Glasper Trio, Jason Moran's All Rise - A Joyful Elegy for Fats Waller, King Creosote's From Scotland with Love, Anna Calvi and Heritage Orchestra, Oneohtrix Point Never and his score for Magnetic Rose and Bullet Hell Abstraction IV, Alexi Murdoch, Wave Movements by Richard Reed Parry and Bryce Dessner performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with images by Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Sufjan Steven's score for Aaron and Alex Craig's film Round-Up performed by Yarn/Wire.

Of the introduction of more diverse music to the festival, Linehan said: "I have always said 'in addition to, not instead'.

"We are not just saying: well, it's easier to put four guys on stage [than an orchestra]. But you can do this as an addition.

"How it plays out against the rest of what we are doing? We have tried to do it in an understated way.

"But there is no doubt, if it really works and doesn't cut across anything - and you can see it fitting with the theatre and dance more - but the big toe in the water will be how the Hub works.

"If we can make this building work in the way I think it can work, then we can make sense of the that room, and that is what we don't have at the moment - a room for amplified music, then we can build out of that.

"Maybe this can be a social centre for the festival more generally."

He added: "I hope it they stand as an international festival project - we are not band booking in that venue, no one is getting a half hour sound check, and people are not waiting in the wings to tear it apart five seconds after they come off stage. It is a different type of environment and space."

Scotland's three national orchestras, the RSNO, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra are all busy at the festival.

The RSNO plays Mahler's Symphony No 7 for Ballett am Rhein in Seven, choreographed by Martin Schläpfer.

The BBC SSO is joined by Max Richter and Daniel Hope in the Playhouse for Recomposed and Memoryhouse.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra performs Wave Movements, composed by Richard Reed Parry and Bryce Dessner with images by Hiroshi Sugimoto in Hub Sessions.

Operas include Komische Oper with a "boundary busting" production of The Magic Flute, as well as Iván Fischer's The Marriage of Figaro with the Budapest Festival Orchestra.

Opera in concert at the Usher Hall celebrates satirical works with Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis, and Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore performed by Scottish Opera and Richard Egarr.

The Festival presents the world premiere of Donnacha Dennehy's The Last Hotel marking great Irish playwright Enda Walsh's first opera libretto.

Dance this year includes works by Sylvie Guillem, Akram Khan and Russell Maliphant, Israel Galván's flamenco and two major European ballet companies in Ballett Zürich and Ballett am Rhein.

Theatre showcases world premieres and commissions from some of the best theatre makers working in English language theatre, with new work from Complicite and Simon McBurney, Robert Lepage and Ex Machina, Citizens Theatre and David Greig and Graham Eatough, and Ivo van Hove and Juliette Binoche joining forces in the already-announced Antigone, which is currently playing at the Barbican in London.

The Volksbühne Berlin makes its first appearance at the Festival with visual artist Dieter Roth's 'unstageable play' Murmel Murmel, which Linehan picked as a highlight and said was "hysterical".

For the first time the Festival will also showcase to already proven successful Scottish work, this year presenting Dragon and Paul Bright's Confessions of a Justified Sinner.