Aida

Giuseppe Verdi

Thursday, June 19th at 8:00 pm, in the Maggio Main Hall, the last opera show of the 87th Maggio Festival.

The program features “Aida” by Giuseppe Verdi.

On the podium, leading the Maggio Orchestra and Chorus, conductor emeritus for life Zubin Mehta.

The direction is by Damiano Michieletto, who transports the opera into an ashen and dark contemporary setting.

On stage, Olga Maslova as Aida; SeokJong Baek as Radamès; Daniela Barcellona plays Amneris and Daniel Luis de Vicente and Leon Kim (in the performances of 28/6 and 1/7) play Amonasro.

Staging by the Bayerische Staatsoper of Munich

Thanks to Ferragamo for their support

                                                                                     The performance of June 25th will be broadcast on Rai Radio 3


Florence, June 16th, 2025 – The opera program of the 87th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Festival comes to an end: on Thursday, June 19th, 2025, at 8:00 pm, in the Maggio Main Hall, one of Giuseppe Verdi's most beloved operas, Aida, is scheduled. 
There are five performances in total on the program: June 19th, 25th, and July 1st at 8 pm; June 22nd at 3:30 pm; and June 28th at 5 pm.

On the podium of the Main Hall, leading the Maggio Orchestra and Chorus, will be the conductor emeritus Zubin Mehta, who over the course of his career has made this opera one of the highlights of his Verdi repertoire. This production - characterized by dark colors and lights, where the naked and human aspect of the characters that form the staging emerges - is taken from the "Bayerische Staatsoper" of Munich and is directed by Damiano Michieletto.

The maestro of the Maggio Chorus is Lorenzo Fratini.

The scenes are by Paolo Fantin, the costumes by Carla Teti, the lights by Alessandro Carletti, the dramaturgy is by Mattia Palma and the choreographic movements by Thomas Wilhelm. The video projection is curated by rocafilm | Roland Horvath.

The singing company is made up of Olga Maslova – who returns to the Maggio after the acclaimed performances of the inaugural Turandot of the last edition of the Festival – as Aida and SeokJong Baek, also the protagonist of the inaugural Turandot last year and of Verdi's Requiem last April, as Radamès.

Daniela Barcellona plays Amneris, the Pharaoh's daughter - a part she played a few months ago in the production of Aida at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires - and Daniel Luis de Vicente and Leon Kim (in the performances of June 28th and July 1st), both returning after their Rigoletto this February, play Amonasro. Simon Lim plays Ramfis and Manuel Fuentes, also returning after their Rigoletto this February, plays The King.

The cast is completed by Suji Kwon and Yaozhou Hou, respectively in the roles of A Priestess and A Messenger.

Maestro Zubin Mehta has made Aida one of the pillars of his repertoire by conducting it in Florence on several occasions: the first time was on the occasion of the 32nd Maggio Musicale, in 1969, directed by Carlo Maestrini and with sets and costumes by Enrico d'Assia; the second time was during the 1996 Summer Season, directed by Lorenzo Mariani with sets and costumes by Raffaele Del Savio; more recently he conducted the spring 2011 production of Aida, directed by Ferzan Özpetek and with sets by Dante Ferretti. There have also been numerous occasions in which the conductor emeritus of the Maggio has taken the opera on tour together with the Maggio Orchestra and Chorus, such as in Japan in September 1996 and, in March 2016, at the Čajkovskij Concert Hall in Moscow.

“I believe that Aida represents a bridge between Verdi’s music and that of Richard Wagner. First of all, there are recurring themes, such as the one that resounds in the orchestra, starting from the Prelude, when Aida appears, which recall Wagner’s Leitmotifs” underlined Zubin Mehta, reiterating his thoughts already expressed previously on many occasions when speaking about this opera “we are faced with an opera in which Verdi has now almost completely abandoned closed numbers, in favor of increasingly larger and more complex scenes. The third act, for example, with its continuous musical flow is very close to the Wagnerian concept of infinite melody: here, in fact, some of the underlying themes of the opera are concentrated without interruption in a continuous dramatic and musical tension. Without a moment’s respite, we witness the heated conversation between Aida and her father Amonasro, with the young slave torn between the love of her country and the love for the victor of her compatriots and the devoured Ethiopian King. from the anxiety of revenge; then the Aida-Radames duet, with the latter in turn forced to choose between his love for Aida and abandoning his homeland; finally the involuntary betrayal of the young warrior, the ferocious joy of Amonasro and Radamès' surrender to the High Priest Ramfis. And Verdi resolves this dramatic and musical matter with truly ingenious solutions, with an absolutely incandescent tension. Faced with such contrasting feelings and characters so deeply sculpted on a psychological level, it makes you smile to think that Aida has been spoken of for so long as an opera written for a celebratory occasion.

Furthermore, I believe it is wrong to ‘crush’ the interpretation of Aida only on the great spectacular effects – continues Maestro Mehta - Let's think of the Amneris-Radamès duet in the last act, when the Pharaoh's daughter offers the young warrior his life in exchange for giving up his love for Aida. The two are alone, far from any clamor, and between them a dialogue takes place in which once again opposing feelings clash: Amneris' desire for possession and jealousy and Radamès' affirmation of his own innocence and love for Aida. And again the scene between Aida and Radamès, when the young slave wrests from her beloved, with "political" skill, the secret of the path that the Egyptian troops will take to fall on the Ethiopian enemy and then invites him to flee with her far from his homeland. In both cases the drama is entirely interior, of characters torn apart in their depths by contrasting passions. Verdi's greatness lies in being able to make "theatre" out of this clash of feelings”.

Emphasizing the aspects that most characterize his direction, Damiano Michieletto said: “Aida is a great war story within which there is a small love story: but in defining Verdi’s masterpiece we could also say the opposite; it is only necessary to establish where to place the emphasis. In fact, it is an opera that combines great choral moments (such as the very famous Triumphal March) with decidedly more intimate and sentimental situations. For this reason it is not performed in the Egypt set by Verdi but in a contemporary “elsewhere” to tell the characters and their humanity, the psychology and drama of those who experience war. The most intimate situations are naturally linked to the love story between Aida and Radames which, in an almost Shakespearean style, is born under an opposite star: the two in fact belong to different peoples who are also enemies of each other. It is a love that is almost impossible, since it is destined to clash with the great story that looms behind them and, as often happens in operas, Verdi, there is the figure of the father who forces his daughter to obey his orders, thus making her lose her nature. In this production, through flashbacks, we will tell the memories of the past; the memories of Aida's mother and the memory of Aida as a child with her parents. These flashbacks - imaginary and 'dreamy' - will be those that lead us to the end of the story, where she reaches Radames in the tomb, a dark and gloomy place where both will be welcomed by a real pyramid of ashes; the ashes - specifies the director - which are the symbol of the destruction of war, we will find them scattered everywhere from the beginning of the opera. We wanted to give value to Aida's choice to die with Radames; she chooses to do this because she wants to crown her dream of love and therefore next to them we will find all those who have already died like Aida's father, her friends; everyone gathers in an imaginary 'party' where they celebrate, yes, death but they do so by celebrating their love. Below, on the proscenium, remains Amneris who invokes her cry for peace: “peace, peace, peace!” which are the last words that remain of this work and which is perhaps the message that this story, after all the violence and war, wants to convey: a message of hope”.

The opera:
The third to last opera in Verdi’s catalogue, with a libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, Aida debuted on 24 December 1871 at the Cairo Opera House. After a long negotiation, Verdi had accepted the proposal of the Khedive of Egypt to compose the opera on an Egyptian subject for the inauguration of the Suez Canal. Although undoubtedly modelled according to the canon of grand opéra due to the presence of a historical-political plot, grandiose mass scenes and dances, Aida is also an opera about individuals, first and foremost the protagonist. Aida, a former Ethiopian princess reduced to the rank of handmaiden to Amneris, the daughter of the Pharaoh, is torn between the love she feels for the head of the Egyptian army Radamès and the love for her homeland, according to a well-known and tried-and-tested cliché of Italian melodrama. The reasons of her heart clash with the loyalty she owes to her father, King Amonasro, who is ready to march on Thebes to free his daughter from slavery. However, in order to remain at her beloved's side, Aida chooses death, buried alive together with her Radamès in one of the most iconic opera finales of Verdi's theatre. 
Welcomed triumphantly at its debut, Aida was for many years Giuseppe Verdi's most popular opera. Generally remembered for its trumpets, fanfares, triumphal march and monumental choral pages, Aida is also a work of extremely rarefied musical moments, outlined with precious and delicate orchestral colours, such as in the well-known finale.