“Please hold your trunk up so it doesn’t drag!” Jasper Barendregt is a little worried about the star of his show, a real giant: the elephant Ayana is 4.99 meters high in front of the entrance to the Olympic Hall, where she will make a truly huge appearance in the XXL opera “Aida ” will have: with 250 actors, technical tricks, 20 liters of perfume (scent: ancient Egypt) and the Nile, which floods the audience in the arena like a giant blue flag. “And with great music,” enthuses producer Barendregt, “it will be opera for everyone. And the chip shop is right next door.”
The passers-by are quite impressed by Ayana (“the beautiful flower”), a local beauty named Ingrid on her hump (later Princess Amneris will be enthroned there) and the soldiers accompanying her. Some people have to look twice before they realize that Ayana is a mechanical replica of an elephant – especially when she swivels her head, wiggles her ears and moves her trunk (a puppeteer inside her makes this possible).
To finally get to the right place, Ayana has to be pushed on wheels, carefully. Barendregt enlists a few nearby Munich residents to do this. And that is also part of the concept: citizens should participate in “Aida”. A children’s ballet is already rehearsing; and there will be a big casting on November 8th (location and date below www.aida-opera.live), where amateurs – even wheelchair users should come – can audition for one of 32 roles in the prison choir. Your task: “Come on stage, suffer a little, be released.”