The Dresden Semperoper is certainly not the first address when it comes to entrusting old material to the critical zeitgeist – or subjecting it to political fads. It belongs to the ranks of the big houses, such as the Vienna State Opera or the North American opera houses, which rely more on great singers than on ruthless direction. At a time when singers and conductors are being asked to adopt the expected political stance, one may be surprised at a stage that so openly distrusts political art, as can now be seen in Dresden in Katharina Thalbach’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera hit “Aida”. will. After all, as is now customary, the national anthem of Ukraine was played before the opera began. If art and music are always political, as can often be heard in a rather undifferentiated manner, what is the political element in “Aida”? And what kind of art do you end up with if, like Katharina Thalbach, you simply ignore the political factor?
First of all, music is not political per se, even if it roars and roars as thunderously as in Verdi’s “Aida”. This opera is almost always in forte and fortissimo and sometimes even louder. The conductor Christian Thielemann can shape the extremes with the Sächsische Staatskapelle so sonorous that they never tip over from the euphoric into the noisy. Is that too elegantly conducted? Shouldn’t it be painful here and there in order to achieve a political effect? It’s not that simple. Music needs a conceptual context in order to be political. The pure sound, the sheer gesture of speech are too abstract to concretise any statement. You can use the same music for opposite content; This has been well documented since Johann Sebastian Bach at the latest.
The non-political staging is also a political statement
Verdi’s “Aida” is a war opera. This genre has existed since George Frideric Handel, sometimes in the service of English propaganda. With Verdi one thinks: always in the service of the fatherland. The prisoners’ chorus from his opera “Nabucco” was sung over and over again, and the composer was celebrated as a hero of the unification of Italy. It hardly gets more political. His “Aida,” on the other hand, was intended to deliver something akin to political folklore for the opening of the Suez Canal, some say, but others say it wasn’t intended for the specific occasion. In any case, the opera was first performed in Cairo in 1871, two years after the opening of the canal. But since when do Italian operas premiere in Egypt unless someone pays well for it? And isn’t such ordered art automatically suspicious of propaganda intentions or at least of pleasing content?
In any case, in “Aida” we experience the great people of brave Egyptians who fend off the attack of the “barbaric Ethiopians” time and time again and incorporate them into their kingdom as slaves. In 1981 in Frankfurt, Hans Neuenfels also used cinematic means to portray this quite drastically and politically. Katharina Thalbach, on the other hand, has stage-high, medium-brown wooden panels placed on the stage, which creates the best acoustic conditions for the wonderful singing voices – Krassimira Stoyanova as Aida, Francesco Meli as Radames – but eludes all further interpretations. In the end, the general’s love for the slave triumphs over everything else in their common death. Is this staging an alternative to current demands that artists and art should become more political?
In times of war, new rules apply. Where people used to welcome things that brought people together, one now assumes that it is in the work of the conductor Valery Gergiev a striving for supremacy of Russian art and music, “the sonorous staging of an aggressive Great-Russian ideology that openly proclaims dominance over Europe”. That’s how it was in the mirror to read, and then one immediately feels encouraged to defend the fatherland musically as well. But if one were to demand a more political stance from artists and art, even from those who have already died, then one would not only have to live with the risk of finding some on the wrong side. Then you have to want artistic freedom to weigh less than a desired political and moral attitude. In this respect, the Dresden “Aida” is also a political statement. Namely for the currently not so easy to defend belief in a free art.
kind transmits the staging on March 13 from 4.25 p.m. live from the Semperoper.