Available through Safarkhan Art Gallery
The story of
How Aida was created
There is an opera by Verdi that a lot of people like. Its name is ‘Aida’ and provides everything an opera can provide. Khedive Ismail wanted Verdi to write a special opera for Cairo, but Verdi had no feelings at all about modern Egypt. As the great artist he was, he ignorantly managed to master the situation from his home in Italy. The information that laid the foundation for the opera was instead gathered by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. But, as Edward Said puts it, ‘Egyptology is Egyptology and not Egypt” and since Egyptology was enabled by imperial domination, it is now obvious to see how Aida is linked to imperial domination.
Said, E.W. (1994). The empire at work: Verdi’s Aida. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage, pp. 140-168
