Confrontations

The thorny questions of interpretation and the complex historical baggage associated with Aida have done little to diminish its popularity … and perhaps that is as it should be: the opera’s undeniable qualities – it includes some of Verdi’s most lucid late-period writing and offers a nuanced take on the perennial Verdian triangle of love, family and country – have allowed it to function on the level of entertainment, even as its setting and action offer a springboard for inquiries of greater conceptual depth. Certainly the new production at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden did not shy away from difficult themes: the staging, directed by Calixto Bieito, pushed the story’s war atrocities and nationalistic pageantry to the fore and gave them an unsettlingly recognisable modern edge; however the succession of intensely-focussed confrontations…