"Aida" at the Gran Teatre del Liceu

The Liceu opens its season with an exceptional cast led by Anna Netrebko and Anna Pirozzi in the role of Aida, together with Yusif Eyvazov and Piotr Beczała as Radamès. A sumptuous opening to bring to life one of Verdi's most monumental operas, presented in a striking production by the Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, who turns Aida into "a visual ritual in which beauty and conflict are in constant dialogue."

This production, originating at the Salzburg Festival, steers clear of usual grandiloquence and places Verdi's drama in a universe of great symbolic force. Neshat, with her poetic and committed gaze, transforms Aida into a narrative that dialogues with contemporary tensions: identity, exile, oppression and the fragility of power. Thus, the opera becomes a mirror of the present, in which the aesthetic is combined with a subtle but powerful political reading.

Often interpreted as a love story in an idealized Egypt, Aida reveals a deeper conflict: the collision between what is sacred and established power. Aida, an enslaved Ethiopian princess, and Radamès, the Egyptian hero, love each other in secret and defy a system that condemns love as dissidence. Their story, doomed from the outset, exposes a rigid structure in which law and religion are intertwined to justify repression.

Neshat's stage conception accentuates this tension through visual beauty that does not forgo criticism. In the final tomb scene, Aida and Radamès find a last space of freedom: death becomes redemption, an act of emotional and spiritual release that transcends the violence surrounding them.

With Antonello Manacorda as music director, and with Ekaterina Semenchuk and Ksenia Dudnikova as Amneris, as well as Artur Ruciński and Igor Golovatenko as Amonasro, this Aida opens the Liceu season as a grand total spectacle: emotion, reflection, and a visual force that invites the audience to experience opera as a ritual and contemporary experience.

Opera in four acts

Libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni

• World premiere: December 24, 1871 at the Cairo Opera
• Barcelona premiere: April 16, 1876 at the Teatre Principal
• Gran Teatre del Liceu premiere: February 25, 1877
• Last performance at the Liceu: February 2, 2020
• Total performances at the Liceu: 468