Aida

It would appear that the first thought to cross a director’s mind when he takes on staging Aida is try to do everything according to Verdi. Yet for some reason no one does it. We’ve come to believe that Aida – is a grand show with spectacular scenery and costumes, marching extras, preferably even with elephants on stage. And forte, forte, forte all the time! But if we open the score, we will find ourselves looking at a very different picture. More than half of the opera is piano and pianissimo.
We’ve agreed with the conductor to follow the author’s instructions precisely to turn Aida from a pompous show into an intimate psychological drama as intended. What we have here is a classical love triangle: two women love one man. Everything else – politics, war, religion, and intrigue is just a background against which the action takes place.