2:00 pm | $12/$6 children
Monumental! That’s the only way to describe Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida, captured live at the 2009 Bregenz Festival production on the shores of Austria’s Lake Constance in an HD cinema experience, sung in Italian with English subtitles, to be screened at Rosendale Theatre. Starring Tatiana Serjan as Aida and Rubens Pelizzari as Radames, the cast includes American bass-baritone Kevin Short, Iano Tamar, and Tigran Martirossian, and features the Polish Radio Choir, Krakow; Bregenz Festival Chorus; and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Carlo Rizzi, conductor. The program will last approximately 2 hours and 15 minutes with no intermission.
Stage direction by Graham Vick CBE, long associated with Glyndebourne Opera, and set and costume design by Paul Brown, famous in North America for his Phantom of the Opera sets, this spectacular presentation on the Bregenz Festival floating lake stage stirs-up a feeling of awe appropriate to Aida, an opera already known for its large proportions. David Pountney, artistic director of the Festival, wrote in his program notes,”There was, of course, nothing random about my decision to mount Aida… This stage is after all a marvellous venue for everything that this composer did best: transforming grand passion and tragic conflict into superb music.” Traditionally set in Egypt, for the Bregenz Festival the action was moved to the foot of the Statue of Liberty torn to pieces. The giant parts of Liberty’s head are put together while the performance is in progress.
The story of the tragic love between the Ethiopian princess Aida – once brought to the Nile as a slave – and the Egyptian commander Radames was enthusiastically acclaimed at its premiere in Cairo in 1871. Since then Aida has gone on to become one of the most popular and most performed works in the opera repertoire. This screening is made through special arrangement with Unitel and the kindness of Clara Aich.