News

23.10.2019

From the Heart of Egypt

The Mikhailovsky Theatre is staging Verdi’s famous opera Aida for the first time. Never before have the throne room of the pharaohs’ palace or the temple of the god Ra in Memphis been seen on our stage. While it is not the Ancient Egyptian plotline, but rather its rare musical richness that makes the opera a masterpiece “for all time”, Aida also stands out for its historical and mythological background.

Aida was commissioned by Ismail Pasha, Vice-Sultan of Egypt, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. The Suez Canal opened to shipping in November 1869, and the opening of the Cairo’s Royal Opera House was timed to coincide with this event. The premiere of Aida had to wait, however: the Franco—Prussian war delayed delivery of the luxurious costumes that had been made in Paris for the production. The high-ranking guests attending the occasion were instead treated to a sumptuous ball and a performance of Rigoletto. The premiere of the “unparalleled” Aida took place two years later, in December 1871. It was not only a resounding success, but also, in a certain sense, the culmination of the “Age of Egypt”, as the period from 1822 to 1922 is sometimes called. This was the time when Ancient Egypt’s vanished civilization not only became widely known across Europe, but also gave rise to a specific style in various types of art. This “Egyptian style” found expression in architecture, furniture and interior design, fashion, and jewellery.

Before the 17th and 18th centuries, most of what Europeans knew of the Land of the Pharaohs came from the works of ancient authors and artefacts transported to Rome by the Romans. European scholars began carrying out field work in Egypt itself during the Age of Enlightenment. The Napoleonic Wars saw a significant increase in such studies. French troops seized Egypt during the campaign of 1798–1801, and officers and men of Napoleon’s army, as well as the scholars and artists accompanying the troops, took a huge number of artefacts of Ancient Egyptian culture away with them. The English later began to compete with the French in the market for these artefacts, forcing their rivals out of the country. The wave of “Egyptomania” that engulfed Europe gained a new dimension in 1822, when the linguist Jean-François Champollion deciphered the text of the so-called Rosetta Stone, a breakthrough which made it possible to read hieroglyphs. The next landmark on the path to knowledge of Ancient Egyptian civilization, comparable with Champollion’s tour de force, was the discovery by the British archaeologist Howard Carter of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. It is symbolic that Aida is dated midway between these two events. Although the composition of an opera should not, strictly speaking, be included in a historical context, an exception can be made for Aida. The scenario was developed by the celebrated French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, which dealt with excavation, clearing, and preservation. He was the first Director of the Cairo Museum and went down in history as “Mariette Bey”, a title conferred on him by the Egyptian government in recognition of his services. It is noteworthy that the set and costumes for Aida were made according to drawings by Mariette.

The scenario, drawing on a theme from Ancient Egyptian history proposed by the archaeologist, was turned into a detailed prose text by the French librettist Camille du Locle, and then a verse text in Italian by the poet Antonio Ghislanzoni. Verdi himself was involved in the work on the libretto and the plotline, and gave careful consideration to the psychological development of the characters. The ethnographic background was also of interest to the composer. The Russian music critic Herman Laroche, a contemporary of Verdi’s, drew attention to the great care Verdi took in adding local colour, calling this a “new facet” in the development of the composer’s talent: “The charm of his music conjures up before us an ancient and exotic world, full of fantastic grandeur: the hot climate of Egypt, its rich art, the splendour of its kings, and its gloomy, formidable religion are brought to life before our eyes, taking us back several thousand years into the past.”