Month: czerwiec 2019

This is yet another June that I am spending with Wagner’s music: more and more intensively from year to year, since the first Tristan in Longborough (put on for the 150^th anniversary of the world première), because I have been deliberately following the singers who have been making their entrée into the world of the master of Bayreuth under the watchful care of Anthony Negus. This time, as a prelude to the new staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen under his baton, I decided to head to Konzert Theater Bern for a Tristan featuring Lee Bisset, a phenomenal Isolde in the 2017 revival of the Longborough Festival Opera’s production, as well as Swedish tenor Daniel Frank, whom I was not able to see in the last year’s Götterdämmerung in Karlsruhe – which I regretted enormously at the time, for he had sounded very promising in recordings. The Bern opera house, furthermore, has a beautiful Wagnerian tradition: the Neo-Baroque building designed by René von Wurstemberger was inaugurated in 1903 with a presentation of Tannhäuser; and the Swiss première of Tristan took place in March 1889 at the Hôtel de Musique, the theatre’s previous headquarters which were demolished at the beginning of the 20^th century.

I traveled to Switzerland full of the highest hopes: the stage-directing concept was the responsibility of Ludger Engels, a thoroughly-educated German musician who took a turn in the direction of theatre at the instigation of distinguished conductor and Bach-Collegium Stuttgart founder Helmuth Rilling. Since the mid-1990s, Engels has directed over 30 opera productions, including a Minimalist, relatively well-received staging of Tristan und Isolde for Theater Aachen (2012). If I had read the reviews of that production more carefully, a red light would have gone on in my head. For even critics immune to the extravagances of German Regieoper pointed out the lack of any relationships between the title characters, accusing the director of treating Tristan too literally as an idea drama. In Bern, Engels went all the way and transfigured Wagner’s masterpiece into a multileveled theatre-in-a-theatre, referring to the work of Berlin performance artist Jonathan Meese. Perhaps readers remember that in 2014, Meese was supposed to prepare a new staging of Parsifal in Bayreuth. The Festival management finally dissolved their contract with him, officially citing the endeavour’s excessively high cost. Behind the scenes, it was whispered that the problem was rather the artist’s predilection for the Nazi ‘Heil Hitler’ gesture, for the use of which – in his performance art work entitled Größenwahn in der Kunstwelt, presented at the documenta exhibition – Meese faced charges at the Regional Court in Kassel. He won the case and did not abandon his controversial practices. Frankly, his artistic performances border on chutzpah: a certain critic even christened him the a Borat of contemporary art.

Tristan und Isolde at the Konzert Theater Bern. Daniel Frank (Tristan) and Robin Adams (Kurwenal). Photo: Christian Kleiner

This did not, however, prevent Engels from characterizing Tristan as Jonathan Meese, supplying him with three Isoldes (one singing, supposedly a metaphor of Mathilde Wesendonck; and two silent: Wagner’s first wife Minna, that is, his past love; and his future companion Cosima, whom he for unknown reasons posed as a cross between Lady Gaga and Klaus Nomi); and trashing the stage with oodles of props which, to the initiated, brought to mind the art of the German scandalmonger, but reminded probably no one of Wagner’s drama (stage design: Volker Thiele; costumes: Heide Kastler; lights: Bernhard Bieri). And as if that weren’t enough, he played out each of the three acts in a completely different stylistic language, without drawing them together through any kind of narrative link, and then made the singer playing the roles of the Shepherd and the Young Sailor (Andries Cloete) ‘stage direct’ the whole thing. I shall not undertake any thorough exegesis of Engels’ concept – I shall only report that in the final accounting, no one died (but neither did anyone connect with anyone); and in the final scene, the director did not fail to remind us of Meese’s declaration that ‘Kunst ist totalste Freiheit’. Judging from the uproarious laughter in Act III when Kurwenal asks Tristan, ‘Bist du nun tot? Lebst du noch?’, the audience noticed certain divergences between the libretto and the stage director’s vision.

Unfortunately, the onstage mess affected the quality of the singing. Lee Bisset came out considerably beneath her abilities – while the acting was superb, she sang in a tired voice with excessive vibrato and insecure intonation. Daniel Frank – blessed with a tenor of beautiful timbre and a high degree of musicality – began to lose power already in the middle of Act II, and was not able to build the tension in Tristan’s long death scene. The velvety-voiced Claude Eichenberger (Brangäne), though awkward from an acting standpoint, made a fine impression. Robin Adams shaped the character of Kurwenal solidly, but at times he clearly lost control over the volume of his powerful baritone. The unexpected hero of the evening turned out to be the Berner Symphonieorchester – playing with slightly reduced forces under the baton of their director Kevin John Edusei at quite slow tempi and with a clear, ‘Modernist’ sound. This was a Wagner decidedly closer to the aesthetics of Boulez than – let us say – Thielemann, splendidly adapted to the acoustics of the hall and sufficiently intriguing to draw attention away from the indubitable weaknesses of Ludger Engels’ staging.

I traveled to England with the steadfast conviction that things could only get better. Confident about the musical side of the first part of the Ring in Longborough, I was a bit nervous about the staging concept of Amy Lane – a talented stage director, though not yet very experienced (to date, she has honed her craft above all as an assistant; she has also worked on revivals of, among other items, Kaspar Holten’s take on King Roger for the Sydney Opera House). My fears turned out to be unfounded, though it would be difficult to call the new vision of Das Rheingold innovative. Lane alluded loosely to the legendary Ring staging of Patrice Chéreau – an image of Europe in Industrial Revolution times, a soulless world controlled by lust for profit, eaten away by the cancer of corruption and exploitation. Chéreau ‘bourgeois’ Ring had been, however, extraordinarily clear from a visual standpoint, while Lane did not resist the temptation to complement the economical stage design (Rhiannon Newman Brown) with ubiquitous and sometimes overly literal projections. Some of Tim Baxter’s ideas, however, spoke to the imagination – above all, the Modernist vision of Valhalla, looming in the distance like the silhouette of an unfinished factory.

Das Rheingold at the LFO. Darren Jeffery (Wotan). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

On the other hand, Amy Lane guided the singers in a masterful manner, subtly highlighting the character traits of the protagonists and network of interdependencies in which they are entangled. Her tragic take on Alberich shed new light on the inevitable fall of Wotan – he stumbled into the embrace of evil gradually, motivated at first by humiliation, then by anger and cruelty, finally by overwhelming despair. The death of Fasolt was predictable already at the moment when, nestled in the giant’s embrace, Freia for a split-second returned his caress – thereby giving evidence of the feelings arising between the two of them, which could foil the plans of the gold-hungry Fafner. Loge turned out to be a quintessentially Mephistophelian character: a connoisseur of the nature of gods, dwarves and giants, but at the same time, an enemy of all inhabitants of the mythical world; an ironic mocker who, beneath the mask of a smile, concealed deep contempt for the representatives of all creation. The perverse demigod, who plays a key role in the narrative of Das Rheingold, would have been even more convincing had Lane brought him closer to Goethe’s prototype, instead of giving him traits of the devil from late Romantic takes on Gounod’s opera. It would also have been worthwhile to polish up the differences of proportion between the characters: a Mime who clearly towers over other protagonists disturbs the credibility of the narrative. Some of the fault for this lies with the costume designer (Emma Ryott) – fortunately, much time remains until the closing of the Ring, so there will be opportunity yet to correct minor flaws in the staging.

It is difficult to determine who among the cast deserved the most applause – the surprising, indeed Expressionist Alberich of Mark Stone, blessed with a perfectly-placed and richly-shaded baritone; or the terrifying Loge of Marc Le Brocq, with each phrase chiseled like a laser engraving on marble, luminous and intonationally secure. Darren Jeffery built a surprisingly ‘human’ character of Wotan – with a voice full of melancholy, sometimes trembling in pain, bringing to mind associations with the most subtle performances of the German Lied repertoire. His soft bass-baritone found an ideal counterweight in the sonorous and rounded soprano of Madeleine Shaw (Fricka), which superbly conveyed the quandaries of the father of the gods’ partner entangled in ‘male’ intrigue. Blessed with a sensuous, almost girlish soprano, Marie Arnet portrayed a very convincing Freia; Adrian Dwyer, who has a clear and piercing tenor at his disposal, sang out Mime’s torment in a shocking manner. Out of the two giants, the more memorable for me was the moving Fasolt (Pauls Putnins). It is a bit regretful that the otherwise quite good Froh (Elliot Goldie) ran out of power just before the finale: in the ecstatic phrase ‘Zur Burg führt die Brücke’, the voice of the god of rain should truly shine with the colours of the rainbow. Among the Rhine Maidens, I found material for a future Erda – the dense, overtone-rich contralto of Katie Stevenson (Flosshilde). Meanwhile, the role of the earth-mother goddess was portrayed with bravado by Mae Heydorn – with a voice sufficiently ominous and full of authority to freeze the blood in the veins not only of Wotan.

Loge (Marc Le Brocq), Madeleine Shaw (Fricka) and Elliot Goldie (Froh). Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis

Every word onstage came out clearly, ideally articulated, linked one with the other into a deeply thought-out and even more deeply-experienced statement. This time, the orchestra under the baton of the dependable Anthony Negus receded, as it were, into the shadows. In reality, it melded with the singers into one essence, a living, pulsating organism in which the motifs intermingled, circulated like lymph beneath the skin, reached to the deepest levels of the musical fabric. The famous prelude began with a hollow E-flat in the double basses, derived from the viscera of ancient existence; it woke up the horns, then the rest of the instruments and, finally, the whole world. Throughout Das Rheingold, Negus dosed the tension gradually, saving up reserves for the finale. Perhaps this is why I was so impressed by Erda’s prophecy and the metamorphosis of the ‘genesis’ motif, which resounds with tragic sorrow and shifts to a minor tonality, only to draw back like a dead wave after the words ‘Alles was ist, endet’, heralding the inevitable return to the status before the beginning.

Everything that will happen over the next few years at Longborough has been hereby reported. All we have to do now is wait for the remaining parts of the Ring and the great summation in 2023.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski

Resuscitation often ends in the patient being seriously battered and bruised. The sternum breaks, the ribs crack, blood pours into the pleura – a scary list, but no one doubts that inept resuscitation is better than no resuscitation. If it had not been for a musical passion of a lecturer from the University of Göttingen, perhaps Handel’s operas would not have emerged from obscurity. Oskar Hagen, an art historian and amateur musician, became interested in the oeuvre of the Halle master during a long illness. Naturally, he shared his fascination with his wife, the singer Thyra Leisner, and a friend who was a cellist. Everything began with home concerts, fashionable in university circles at the time. Encouraged by their success, Hagen decided to organise something on a larger scale. He produced an edition of Rodelinda and organised the first modern performance of the opera – on 26 June 1920, with a cast featuring university students and lecturers accompanied by musicians of the Akademische Orchestervereinigung conducted by him. These were the beginnings of Händel-Festspiele Göttingen, a cradle of Handel revival, which reached the British Isles only in the 1950s.

There would have been no revival, however, if Hagen hand not adapted Handel’s operatic legacy to the sensitivity of the listeners, brought up for generations on Wagner’s works. He cut the scores of his idol into pieces, rearranged them for a large orchestra, “embellished” the recitatives with instrumental interludes, removed repetitions from da capo arias, transposed the parts written for castratos an octave down and entrusted them to low male voices. This does not change the fact, however, that before the outbreak of the Second World War nineteen Handel operas were revived by German theatres, with no fewer than nine being presented in Göttingen (among them Radamisto, Ottone and Giulio Cesare). In 1943–1953 – with an interval of two years caused by a conflict with the Nazi authorities – music directorship of Händel-Festspiele Göttingen was in the hands of the conductor Fritz Lehmann, an ardent advocate of early music and founder of Berliner Mottetenchor. Since 1981 the Festival has been ruled by British apostles of historical performance: respectively, John Eliot Gardiner, Nicholas McGegan, and since 2011 – Laurence Cummings together with the Managing Director Tobias Wolff.

Fllur Wyn (Esilena) and Erica Eloff (Rodrigo). Photo: Alciro Theodoro da Silva

This season I had an opportunity to come to Göttingen for a longer visit, and I decided to use it and visit the Händel-Festspiele. Unfortunately, I missed a concert performance, apparently excellent, of the oratorio Saul, featuring soloists, NDR Chorus and FestspielOchester conducted by Cummings. I arrived in Göttingen three days later, in time for the auditions of the Festival competition, featuring just five ensembles from Germany, Holland and Switzerland. They were all excellent, which makes it all the more difficult to bridle at the verdict of the jury, which included the Baroque violinist Anne Röhrig, the flautist Maurice Steger and the countertenor Kai Wessel. My sympathies were with the Dutch ensemble Dialogo Antico, not only because of its excellent programme (vocal-instrumental works by Handel, Stradella, Alessandro Scarlatti, Bononcini and Arvo Pärt), but also because of the mature and focused interpretations by the countertenor Toshiharu Nakajima. But the winner was Ensemble Caladrius from Germany, with its charismatic flautist Sophia Schambeck, who displayed undoubted virtuosity in a much more accessible repertoire. It is a pity, though, that all three prizes – Main Prize, Bärenreiter Urtext Prize and the Audience Prize – went to one ensemble. The other finalists deserved at least some kind of consolation prize.

The remaining Festival events were focused on the annual opera premiere at the Deutsches Theater, a Neo-Renaissance building from 1890, which in the mid-twentieth century was eventually transformed into a Sprechtheaterhaus. Since then the building has been resounding with music only once a year, during the Händel-Festspiele. This year it was the turn of Rodrigo, Handel’s first Italian opera, loosely based on the story of Roderic, the last Visigothic king, defeated by the Arabs at the Battle of Jerez de la Frontera. Loosely, because the main theme of the work, the initial title of which was Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, is an inner transformation of the protagonist, who after yet another marital infidelity matures and returns to his beloved although infertile wife Esilena. In between we have everything a Baroque opera should have – desire for revenge, unexpected exchange of partners and several dead bodies. Huge support for the intelligent and occasionally very witty direction by Walter Sutcliffe – who turned Rodrigo into a contemporary warlord battling some shady characters somewhere on the frontier of Western civilisation – was provided by Dorota Karolczak’s sets, perfectly laid out and vividly conveying the labyrinth of nooks and crannies of a dilapidated palace. Interestingly, the sets had been made in the workshops of Poznań’s Teatr Wielki, which should quickly start collaborating with Karolczak directly – as this will be beneficial to the company’s own productions. A separate round of applause is also due to the team of MaskenWerkstatt Schweiz, who so suggestively made up Erica Eloff singing the title role that some audience members could swear they were watching a countertenor.

Almira’s Songbook – Seconda Prat!ca, Queen’s Minstrels. Photo: Alciro Theodoro da Silva

Eloff, who was excellent in portraying her character, was not quite up to the requirements of the role, however – splendid in lyrical fragments, she was disappointing in arias requiring truly masculine bravura and vocal glamour typical of the art of the castratos. Anna Dennis (Florinda) in turn, a singer with a powerful, dark soprano, sometimes made up for technical shortcomings with a large volume. It was a big mistake to cast Evanco as a countertenor. Russell Harcourt fought bravely but unsuccessfully – this is not surprising, because it is a typical en travesti role, written for an agile female soprano with easy top notes. Among the other cast members worthy of note were, especially, Fflur Wyn, a technically phenomenal Esilena, captivating with her golden-hued voice, and Jorge Navarro Colorado (Giuliano), excellent as an actor and singing with a secure and clear tenor. However, the unquestionable hero of the evening – as well as several other Festival events – was the FestspielOrchester conducted by Laurence Cummings. This was yet another piece evidence showing how much can be done by skill, knowledge and passion combined with complete trust in the Kapellmeister. The Göttingen Festival Orchestra features members of Les Arts Florissants, Concerto Köln, Complesso Barocco and other premier league ensembles. Cummings gained his experience as the boss of the London Handel Orchestra and co-founder of the London Handel Players. Their music-making brims with pure joy and authentic, mature love for the legacy of the Festival’s patron.

All these qualities shone even more brightly during a gala concert at St. James’ Church, featuring the French countertenor Christophe Dumaux, whose career has been evolving along quite unexpected lines. Most artists singing falsetto on operatic stages are stars of a few seasons, singers with lovely but harmonically not very rich voices, quickly paling beside fuller, well-handled female voices. Yet Dumaux has been maturing like good wine. He skilfully passes from register to register, sounding like a proper haute-contre at the bottom and shining like a dramatic soprano at the top. He makes a brilliant use of messa di voce, embellishes his arias stylishly and tastefully, and phenomenally builds tension in da capo arias. I will remember his “Ah, stigie larve” as an unrivalled model of the Handelian mad scene; his “Pompe vane di morte” finally convinced me of the greatness of Rodelinda. Dumaux said goodbye to the audience with just one encore: “Cor ingrato” from Rinaldo. I had not returned from a concert so hungry for more for quite some time.

Franziska Fleischanderl (salterio). Photo: Alciro Theodoro da Silva

The remaining Festival events did not carry as much weight for me, which does not mean that they were disappointing. The flautist Dorothea Oberlinger’s recital with Cummings on the harpsichord should serve as an example of how to compile a virtuoso programme of Baroque music with less sophisticated listeners in mind. The performance by the Seconda Prat!ca ensemble, which decided to present a musical portrait of Almira, the protagonist of Handel’s first opera, captivated the listeners with the sensual beauty of Iberian vocal music. The soloists and Coro e Orchestra Ghisleri conducted by Giulio Prandi made up for technical shortcomings with so much enthusiasm that we greeted their performance of Handel’s Dixit Dominus with thunderous applause without any hesitation. Nor did we hesitate before getting up before dawn to get to a concert at 5am and hear how Franziska Fleischanderl welcomes the sun with the delicate sound of the salterio and stories of her extraordinary instrument.

Next year Händel-Festspiele Göttingen will celebrate its centenary. History will come full circle – the organisers are planning a new staging of Rodelinda, from which everything began. It will be interesting to see whether one day they will come up with the idea of reconstructing it in the form devised by Oskar Hagen. Who broke Handel’s ribs, left him badly bruised, but resurrected his oeuvre for good. For the benefit of the whole world.

Translated by: Anna Kijak

Had Ismail Pasha managed his court more wisely, perhaps he would not have squandered the power of his country. The grandson of Muhammad Ali, the first khedive of Egypt, continued with panache the work begun by his grandfather: he built thousands of schools, created a dense network of telegraphic and railway connections, modernized the port of Alexandria, and saw to the development of the fine arts, theatre and opera. In 1879, before the sultan of the Ottoman Empire removed him from office on the initiative of the British government, he stated that ‘my country is no longer in Africa; we have become part of Europe.’ Twenty years later, the illustrated edition of the Orgelbrand Encyclopedia mercilessly summed up his extravagance and ambition as follows: ‘in order to salvage at least his own personal fortune, he stopped paying interest on his debts; however, under pressure from European powers acting in defense of his creditors, he yielded to their demands. […] His unsuccessful attempt to conquer Abyssinia (1876) also contributed to the destruction of the appeal that he had possessed once upon a time in Europe because of his supposed civilizational aims.’

We have, above all, advocates of post-colonial theory to thank for the stubborn myth that the operatic œuvre was a luxury good in Egypt, imported on credit with an eye to a small clientele basically not interested in it. In reality, opera began to enter cultural circulation there back at the end of the 18^th century, via travelling troupes making the rounds between Naples, Alexandria and Cairo. The presentations, originally organized with an eye to the Europeans living in the overseas country, gained increasing interest among the local population. The Egyptians demanded the building of new theatres, formed their own ensembles, made adaptations in the spirit of the Arabic tradition. Former muezzin Salamah Hijazi shone in musical adaptations of plays by Shakespeare, Corneille and Racine; European operas were presented in both versions up until the 1920s.

Rafael Rojas (Radamès) and Alexandra Zabala (Aida). Photo: Clive Barda

So it is no wonder that Ismail Pasha decided to inaugurate the operations of the Royal Opera House in Cairo – founded in honour of the Suez Canal opening – with a new work by Verdi, or more precisely, a festive hymn for the occasion. The composer rejected the proposal of the khedive, who in light of this contented himself with a staging of Rigoletto. He had no intention, however, of giving up: shortly thereafter, he placed before Verdi the script of Aida, penned by famous French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. This time, the bait caught. In November 1870, the score was basically ready, but the première was delayed on account of an unfortunate turn in the Franco-Prussian war – the costumes and scenery were stuck in besieged Paris. The first showing of Aida finally took place on Christmas Eve 1871 and was received enthusiastically by the audience – importantly, on the night of the première comprised above all of diplomats, dignitaries and critics, which had the effect of reinforcing the legend of opera’s elite character in Egypt.

Meanwhile, Aida almost immediately gained enormous popularity. Perhaps because, in comparison with Verdi’s earlier experiments, it is a work almost Classical in form, composed to a conventional and exceptionally clear libretto that revolves around the drama of duty – understandable to audiences on both sides of the Mediterranean. Aida’s greatest asset, however, is its music: an ideal marriage of the Italian tradition with French grand opéra, a captivating combination of opulent scenes of war and triumph with almost Impressionist sound painting in the more intimate moments of the narrative. Some complain that Aida lacks dramatic nerve: I adore swimming in the ‘heavenly’ long passages of this score, which is marked by the subtle lyricism of its cantilenas and the sensual softness of its quasi-Oriental orchestral textures.

For this reason, I set out without deliberation for another encounter with the musicians of Opera North, who last season – under the same baton of Sir Richard Armstrong – put on a show of the highest artistry in Strauss’ Salome. This time, my choice fell upon a semi-staged performance of Aida at Sage Gateshead, one of the most functional and acoustically best music centers in the world. The edifice designed by Norman Foster is a masterpiece of so-called organic architecture – it brings to mind a giant cocoon towering over the bank of the River Tyne. Inside it are three separate buildings divided by walls made of a soundproof concrete blend. The entire steel construction is hidden under an asymmetrical, aerodynamic copula made of glass. The main concert hall seating 1650 alludes loosely to the form and proportions of the Wiener Musikverein, to which fact it owes its phenomenal acoustics – warm and selective, despite a quite lengthy reverberation.

Eric Greene (Amonasro), Alexandra Zabala, Rafael Rojas and Alessandra Volpe (Amneris). Photo: Clive Barda

In such conditions and with such a superb ensemble, they successfully approximated the ideal. It had been a long time since I had heard an Aida led by such a sensitive hand, with such respect for the composer’s instructions, with such care taken to diversify the subtle instrumental shades, especially in the strings. The Opera North chorus displayed a similar sensitivity to intonation and to the timbre of each individual note and sonority. In Act I, I was slightly disappointed with Rafael Rojas, an otherwise experienced and very technically proficient tenor. Fortunately, he quickly pulled himself together and erased my so-so impression of Radamès’ romance ‘Celeste Aida’ devoid of brilliance and passion. His beloved found an ideal performer in the person of Alexandra Zabala – a singer blessed with a supremely lyrical and, at the same time, resonant soprano, perfectly balanced throughout the range of Aida’s part. Her sweet, tender pianissimo high C from the aria ‘O patria mia’ will remain in my memory for a long time. A splendid counterweight for the delicate Aida lost in a cruel world was created by Alessandra Volpe in the role of Amneris. Her dense, sensual voice, beautifully open at the top, is placed somewhere between a mezzo-soprano and a dramatic soprano – this singer, who will be performing next season as, among others, Santuzza in Bari and Carmen in Oslo, is worthy of further attention. A highly suggestive Ramfis was created by Petri Lindroos, an ominous, ice-cold bass (superb Judgement scene in Act IV). It was an excellent idea to cast Eric Greene in the role of Amonasro – the American singer has at his disposal a deep, dark-timbred baritone that he wields with uncommon musicality and feel for style.

The semi-staging, prepared by Annabel Arden (director), Joanna Parker (designer and video director), Dick Straker (video designer) and Richard Moore (lighting designer), though quite naturally minimalist, was even so striking at times with its excess of details distracting attention from the musical narrative. The production team decided to transport Aida into the realities of a contemporary conflict, supplementing the acting tasks with projections displayed at the back of the stage that alluded unambiguously to the current war in Syria. A pity, for the singers placed in front of the orchestra were moving in a metaphorical space, very intelligently arranged using a few multi-functional props (a doorframe with no door, designating the fluid border between the worlds of the Egyptians and the ‘foreigners’; a table which, in the final act, becomes the tomb of Aida and Radamès). The singers’ superb acting and excellently-prepared stage movement permitted one to turn a blind eye to the lack of originality in the costumes, which in ‘new’ opera theatre more and more often take the form of universal signs and symbols (if a ruler, then in a suit; if a fighter, then in a field uniform; if a high-born woman, then in high heels and peignoir). Despite this, I have the impression that staged concert performances should be more ‘static’, or at any rate based on different means of expression than in the case of a fully-staged rendition. Especially if my gloomy prediction that semi-staged productions will become the daily bread of opera comes to pass.

Alessandra Volpe. Photo: Clive Barda

However, experiencing Aida in a perspective so intimate, devoid of all extravagance, did make me aware of something about which I had never thought before. With whom did the first Egyptian viewers of Verdi’s opera identify? With the victorious army of the Pharaohs, or with the conquered Ethiopians? This a dilemma for post-colonial theorists, considerably more intriguing than lengthy discussion of whether Aida was an imperial spectacle for alienated strangers from Europe in Cairo, or yet another masterpiece of a form for which the Egyptians had acquired a taste back during the reign of the Mamluks.

Translated by: Karol Thornton-Remiszewski