Deutsche Oper Berlin - Aida

“Amore, sommissione, dolcezza” were the words used by Verdi to describe his eponymous heroine Aida, an epitome of love, docility and tenderness. Aida joins a list of female protagonists in the art of the 19th century who were not so much flesh-and-blood characters as objects of yearning and a projection screen for male chauvinist dreams and inevitably ended up dying of a broken heart. Aida is no different here, although, in a departure from the format employed in Verdi’s previous operas, AIDA offers an antithesis to doomed love in the form of Amneris. “Molto vivacità” is how Verdi describes her in his list of characters. Amneris is a bundle of vitality. She fights like a lioness to defend her love and is capable of having a solid, committed relationship. Radames, on the other hand, wavering between Aida and Amneris, cannot bring himself to opt for real life. He surrenders to his dreams and fantasies of having an exotic woman from distant climes. At the same time he’s pursuing an ambitious career within a rigid, ideological system. In public he quickly acquires star status. Yet he quickly sees that he cannot escape the pressure exerted by society, not even in his private life. And so it is that his dream of love becomes a matter of public interest.

As such, director Benedikt von Peter sees Verdi’s grand opéra AIDA as a fragile and intimate play about love, a work that is tracked by countless pairs of eyes, and he delivers a production that draws in the entire auditorium of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. With his directorial work and often unconventional use of space von Peter has created a stir in recent years at the opera houses of Basel, Hanover, Frankfurt and Bremen. He has won the Götz Friedrich Prize and the DER FAUST Award for German drama.

Duration: 3 hrs 15 mins / 1 interval

program

Aida
Giuseppe Verdi [1813 – 1901]
Opera lirica in vier Akten
Libretto von Antonio Ghislanzoni nach einem Entwurf von Auguste Mariette,
ausgearbeitet von Camille Du Locle in Zusammenarbeit mit Giuseppe Verdi
Uraufführung am 24. Dezember 1871 in Kairo
Premiere an der Deutschen Oper Berlin am 22. November 2015

In italienischer Sprache mit deutschen und englischen Übertiteln
Einführung: 45 Minuten vor Vorstellungsbeginn im Rang-Foyer rechts
empfohlen ab 15 Jahren

Place

On September 24, 1961 the Opernhaus that had been inaugurated in 1912 and destroyed during the War was reopened as Deutsche Oper Berlin. Ever since it has been Berlin´s largest and Germany´s second largest music theatre, featuring among the most modern institutions in Europe. The straightforward and elegant building that was realized by architect Fritz Bornemann (he also conceived the America Memorial Library and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, a. o.) seats 1.859 and guarantees a maximum viewing and hearing experience for every visitor.