AIDAGiuseppe Verdi
Opera in four acts (seven scenes)
Libretto: Antonio Ghislanzoni after Auguste Marietteand Camille du Locle, under the composer’s supervision
NO ELEPHANTS OR HORSES IN OUR AIDA
Productions of Verdi’s Aida often tend to become more of a circus, where dramatic conflicts are smothered by a massive illustrative décor and masses of clumsy extras. This is a tragic opera of love and patriotism, which tear apart the contradictory and complex characters of Aida, Amneris and Radamès. Our intention is to free direction from staging procedures of piling up and to put into focus the dramatics of relations of the three main characters, though not taking away from this opera of all operas its monumentality. It is in the tension between spectacular scenes of belligerent political and religious exalting in the foreground and dramatic duets that evoke a chamber performance in the spectacle background that we find the dramaturgical challenge of our staging of Aida. We find it important to underline what this opera is really about. Therefore, we will spatially deconstruct, emphasize and conceptually condense its dramatic plot instead of reducing it to an addition to a picture, condemning it to an interference of a decorative set and stage traffic.
The new and anniversary marking Rijeka-Opatija Aida is staged for the specific site of the Opatija Open Air Theatre. There are no elephants, no horses, no sphinxes, colossuses or pyramids, used by those who are trying to fill the void of ideas and overcome the shallow insight into the dramaturgy of Aida, the opera on the downfall of individuality under the pressure of the will and interest of a nation, homeland, state and their leaders.
Marin Blažević, dramaturge and director
World premiere: Cairo Opera House, 24 December 1871
Rijeka premiere: 3 October 1885, on the festive occasion of the Rijeka Theatre building inauguration
Premiere on 20 July 2017, Open Air Theatre Opatija
The performance lasts about three hours, with an interval after Act II.
Scene change between Act I and Act II, also between Act III and Act IV.
Opera sung in Italian, surtitles in Croatian and English.
SPONSOR OF THE OPERA AIDA
PARTNER OF THE PROJECT
