With its thrilling score and poignant story of love and heroism, Aida, Giuseppe Verdi’s famous opera, returns to the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Ciné-Opéra at the Apollo space in Mazamet is programming this brand new production which teleports spectators to the heart of ancient Egypt using elaborate projections and dazzling animations.
Michael Mayer’s staging is resolutely spectacular, with grandiose sets, exuberant costumes, and, on stage, real horses, processions, imposing groups of dancers, in short, it’s a real epic disproportionate, a Greek tragedy or a Hollywood western which is offered to the spectator taking him into imposing pyramids, alongside golden tombs.
For the story, Aida is an Ethiopian princess held captive in Egypt, Amneris, considers her a rival because she is loved by Radamès, the leader of the armies. When the latter returns victorious from a campaign against Ethiopia, Aida is convinced that her father, King Amonasro, died in battle. But disguised as a simple soldier, he survived and proposes to his daughter a plot to discover the military secrets of the Egyptians.
Created in 1871, for the Cairo Opera, on a plot by Mariette, the famous Egyptologist, Aida has since been a huge success, particularly known for the trumpets of its triumphal march, so often repeated. Soprano Angel Blue, discovered in Porgy and Bess, a very different kind of work by George Gershwin, makes her Met debut as the Ethiopian princess torn between love and country, one of the defining roles of the opera, a grandiose melodrama which will see the lovers reunited in death. This new production is announced at the Apollo cinema, Saturday January 25 at 6:30 p.m., for a show in four acts, in Italian with French subtitles.
