Video interview about "Aida"
Questions of Heili Vaus-Tamm about the staging of "Aida". Video is in Estonian.
Our “Aida” will have a happy ending – giving hope that a way out has to exist even from the most hopeless situation. And the opera is ended, fittingly, by the character who changes most during the events – the Egyptian princess Amneris, saying to the audience, the cast but most of all to herself: “Peace!”. An appeal which gains a profound significance in the uncertain world that surrounds us today.
Giuseppe Verdi took a principled stand on human rights. He never visited Egypt and in his correspondence he has stated that he could never admire the Ancient Egyptian civilization that had based its achievements on slavery and authoritarian power. In the libretto of “Aida” too, what fascinated him beyond the glitter of Egypt, was the impotence of man before the theocratic state. And thus PromFest’s “Aida” has no painted pyramids and bronzed slave boys, it is instead an attempt to explore the limits of the grand political spectacle, which casts nations into the whirlwind of war and changes the fates of hundreds at a whim.
Giuseppe Verdi took a principled stand on human rights. He never visited Egypt and in his correspondence he has stated that he could never admire the Ancient Egyptian civilization that had based its achievements on slavery and authoritarian power. In the libretto of “Aida” too, what fascinated him beyond the glitter of Egypt, was the impotence of man before the theocratic state. And thus PromFest’s “Aida” has no painted pyramids and bronzed slave boys, it is instead an attempt to explore the limits of the grand political spectacle, which casts nations into the whirlwind of war and changes the fates of hundreds at a whim.
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