Aida Reimagined: A galactic opera for the ages

Mail & Guardian

26-05-2025

Set in 3025, Cape Town Opera's Aida reinvents itself for a new generation but the voices and the music remain timeless
Yes, it's that grandly spectacular opera that plays out in Egypt, its story set in some Eurocentric vision of an ancient land with made-up wars, muddled historical periods and an absolutely cacophonous agglomeration of characters, plots, subplots, wartime heroics, clandestine love, insane jealousy between romantic rivals, hidden identities, an enslaved princess and, of course, no end of political meddling by terrifying high priests manipulating the intrigue behind the scenes.
It's all that and much more — but don't go to Cape Town Opera's
Aida
expecting some
Indiana Jones
-style 'adventure in archaeology' rendition of what's surely one of the great classical operas.
This version bypasses the oftentimes ridiculous concatenation of historical references and transcends time and space to instead present a post-
Black Panther
reimagining of
Aida
set precisely 1 000 years in the future rather than 4 000 in the past. Whether or not this made-up, fantastical world always works is neither here nor there. If theatre's job is to rip you away from everyday reality and transport you to a faraway place, then this fantastically oversized Magdalene Minnaar-conceived
Aida
does precisely what it's meant to do: it blasts you with every trick in the theatrical playbook — and then some.
Its sets are the most enormous built for Cape Town Opera in decades, the costumes are as out there as you're ever going to set eyes upon and the fierceness with which the cast of apparently millions strides onto stage, puffs its chest, performs, emotes and belts out those surging, soaring, heart-jolting songs while the orchestra performs up a storm — all of it is just so very, very much.
There are elements that could be tempered, reworked, improved upon, but I actually don't care — this is South African opera proving a point. I've seen
Aida
performed at the great Arena amphitheatre in Verona, on an ancient stage, under the stars and in front of a crowd so massive it knocked my socks off. And while that production had mounted horses trotting onto stage and the voices could apparently be heard from miles away, it lacked the lusciousness, the splendour and — indeed — the phantasmagoric boldness and majesty of CTO's staging.
What that Italian production lacked most of all, though, were our voices, our heart and soul. Because something this big, bold, brash and often transfixing production has in spades are singers of such consummate calibre that the voices alone are enough to break your heart — even before the heartbreaking tragedy of the final scene comes along and finishes you off.
Created with spectacle in mind,
Aida
has always been about scale. Written by Giuseppe Verdi at what was evidently the height of his powers, it's an opera seemingly made for a stage at least twice as big as Artscape's Opera House, the space in some scenes tending to become congested.
Sight lines are occasionally a problem, the flamboyantly dressed chorus members in one scene getting lost behind one another. And there's the minor anxiety caused by witnessing long lines of priests dressed in white struggling up and down the immense stairs without breaking character to clutch handrails or search for the steps in the half-darkness. There's so much to see and it's a pity when some of that gets lost or when the intended symmetry is interrupted by minor blips.
Another, perhaps less forgivable, distraction are the highly visible stage hands moving the set around. Sometimes this happens while intimate scenes unfold at the front of the stage. One assumes that in the year 3025 some more advanced stage technology will exist, along with entirely new textiles and fashion designers not so intent on channelling outfits worn by the bourgeoisie in
The Hunger Games
and
The
Fifth Element
.
The costumes, however eye-catching, suggest that couture creators 1 000 years hence will still be working with the same fabrics that can be seen on the streets of Cape Town today (puffer jackets, I'm looking at you) and I'm convinced that Radamès, the Egyptian general who is secretly in love with Aida, was for much of the show dressed in a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms.
But, given the expansiveness and grandeur of the show as a whole, such quibbles are, ultimately, nitpicking.
Against the backdrop of show-stopping spectacle, what takes your breath away are the voices, the spellbinding emotional punches to the gut that erupt from the lungs of these singers. And there's the beauty and sweetness of the music, the monumental grandeur contrasting with the quiet intimacy of a score that's luscious and stirring and likely to make you want to put on your uniform and go to war for love. Plus conductor Kamal Khan's incredible ability to coax so much out of both chorus and orchestra.
What's also inescapable is the immensity of soprano Nobulumko Mngxekeza's performance as Aida. She opens her mouth and you are captivated; whatever special water she drank as a child, my god, it has given her a mighty set of lungs, the purity and honey-smoothness of her soprano voice absolutely carried me away.
Wondrous, too, is her capacity to convey emotion — she is the least diva-ish presence on stage and yet fills the auditorium with Aida's complex feelings. And, have no doubt, what Aida feels is a lot. Verdi puts her through the wringer, the plot forcing her into such a tight, suffocating corner between love and duty.
And she's not alone. Mezzo-soprano Nonhlanhla Yende as Aida's romantic rival, Amneris, the pharaoh's daughter, is similarly stunning. I had to continually remind myself that she was, technically, the 'baddie', because my ears kept falling in love with her voice. She absolutely won me over; did that magical thing Verdi so cleverly wanted to achieve — make the audience grow to empathise with the antagonist.
It helps, no doubt, that Yende is also the singer most admirably costumed. Apart from her striking hairstyling and make-up, at one point she arrives on stage in some sort of crown that for me so beautifully sums up what this production — visually — is aiming for. Indeed, the accessories — the jewellery, especially — are in a genre of excellence all of their own.
And while the casting of Mngxekeza and Yende seems to underscore the fact that Verdi, in 1871, was a man capable of creating an opera designed around two powerful female characters, the leading men here are brilliant, too.
Lukhanyo Moyake as Radamès is fiery and full of genuine emotion, torn in so many directions and yet you absolutely believe him when he chooses love over nationalism. And, as Amonasro, Conroy Scott just blows you away with his effortless bass-baritone voice. Despite inadvertently being made to look like he's in
Phantom of the Opera
, he completely owns his role as the scheming, furiously vengeful Ethiopian king, up to the task of emotionally blackmailing Aida, his daughter.
There's plenty of physicality in this production, too. Seldom will you have seen so many opera singers looking quite so confident in their bodies. There's a harem-style scene, in particular, when a host of women attend on Amneris, everyone dressed in gold, and while it's genuinely playful, full of rollicking naughtiness and slightly steamy, what's most disarming is how in their element the singers truly are.
And there's Gregory Maqoma's choreography, too, which transforms the energy of the ballet sections completely and in one scene in particular compels the audience to hear Verdi in a new way.
Such newness is a good thing.
Egyptologists have for over a century moaned about the factual and historical inaccuracies evident throughout
Aida
, as though they imagine that Verdi meant it to be a Nat Geo documentary. He didn't. He was paid a fortune to create a spectacle that would emotionally buoy and elevate audiences, transport them, and hopefully continue doing so centuries later.
Well, it's more than 150 years since
Aida
was first performed in Cairo, and while the emotions of its lovestruck trio continue to be sung with incredible potency, this sci-fi reimagining of the environment in which the story plays out resolves any academic fuss over cultural and historic inaccuracies.
Aida
has always been a container for pageantry and spectacle. There've been plenty of humungous productions. Aside from the horses ridden onto stage in Verona (and in New York), ballet dancers twirling ribbons and entire orchestras decked out in Egyptian robes, there've been renditions in Luxor with live camels.
In a 1953 film version, with an 18-year-old Sophia Loren as the titular Ethiopian princess, there is blackface, and Loren's voice isn't even her own – she was dubbed by a professional opera singer.
Aida
has seen it all, in fact, including a Met Opera version of it at the start of this year that
The New York Times
referred to as 'blandly old-fashioned, without real poetry, theatricality or fun'.
What's striking about Cape Town Opera's
Aida
–
our
Aida
– is that it is not only grippingly theatrical, but tremendously good fun, and hugely accessible. Given the enormity of the heartbreak towards which the storyline inevitably leads, it is to the show's great credit that it's able to hold us in thrall of the visual and sonic spectacle, fill us with such delight and plant smiles on our faces before ultimately causing tears to well.
And all of its many constituent elements are a potent reminder, too, of what an extraordinarily rich cultural landscape we're part of here at the tip of Africa
*
Aida
is playing at Artscape in Cape Town until 31 May.