Aida by Verdi, Od (2023/2024), Režírované Lydia Steier, Dirigent Erik Nielsen, Opernhaus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Verdi’s Oper Aida was written for Egypt – then part of the Ottoman Empire - belatedly fulfilling Viceroy Ismail Pascha’s dream. He modernised the region at a time of ever-growing aspirations for autonomy, had an opera house built modelled on a French theatre and oversaw the achievement of the century, the Suez Canal. He wanted to commission a work – ideally an opera – by Giuseppe Verdi - to celebrate it’s completion, but the composer turned the invitation down. But the Viceroy wouldn’t give up, even after the canal and opera house opened in 1869. The French author and archeologist Auguste Mariette’s scenario eventually managed to help change the composer’s mind. Aida lives a dream in Verdi’s conjured up exotic-oriental sound world which was omnipresent in the 19th century, led to catastrophe in the 20th and is alarmingly growing again, of national ascendancy. Strictly contrapuntal music reflects the rigid theocratic structures of the society evoked, while the emotional lives of the characters unfold in intimate scenes. Lydia Steier develops her ideas for the work she staged for Theater Heidelberg further, getting to the nitty-gritty of the mechanisms of power, the characters' anxieties, the impossibility of their relationships and losing out to political systems.