REUTERS BERLIN

A mammoth production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, ‘Aida’ reached the stage in Berlin as a finale to a world tour lasting eight years.
On opening night, opera fans old and new flocked to the Berlin Deutschlandhalle for a what has been billed as the biggest opera production in the world.
It is the story of Radames, the captain of an Egyptian guard who is in love with Aida, an Ethiopian slave. Amneris, princess of Egypt, is in turn besotted by Radames and he becomes involved in a complicated love triangle.
Aida’s father, Amonasro — who is King of Ethiopia — is discovered among the newly captured Ethiopian prisoners. It is through his doing that this love story becomes a tragedy. Amonasro persuades his daughter, Aida to use her influence over Radames to betray his country’s secrets. Radames is dicovered and condemned to be immured alive. Aida voluntarily shares his fate.
Verdi wrote Aida for the new opera house in Cairo, built in celebration of the Suez canal. Its initial premiere was delayed until 1871, after the Franco-Prussian war. Aida is among the most popular of Verdi’s mature operas and has always been known for its grandeur of spectacle .
The premiere of the current show was in Montreal in 1988 and has since toured through Toronto, Vancouver, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico, Hungary, Holland, Stuttgart, Munich, Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Lisbon, Zurich, Basel and many more. Years on, it has proved its success across cultures.
Brought to the world by Hoffman productions — who also introduced us to “The Three Tenors” — Maestro Giuseppe Raffa is joined by an all-star cast including Leona Mitchell and Wilhelmina Fernandez as Aida, Dennis O’Neill and Antonio Ordonez as Radames, Grace Bumbry and Bruna Baglioni as Amneris.
Raffa created productions since the 1980’s to bring the opera “closer to the people”. Raffa says there are three main ingredients to Aida’s success, music quality, a popularised production and the showmanship of a spectacular Egyptian setting.
Leona Mitchell, who has played the part of Aida in almost 200 performances around the world said the production was “very exciting because we have live animals which we don’t always have in the opera house. It gives an ambience of Egypt, and I think it’s more like a celebration”.
Camels, a boa constrictor named Aida and a troop of elephants are perhaps the biggest draw for those who would not normally attempt to interpret the opera. Fernandez says of working with such large cast members. “as long as the elephant doesn’t stand in front of me and I get up stage I have no problem with it”.
A cast of 1,000 don 1500 costumes throughout the performance in front of a 16-metre high sphinx. A 1500-metre-square stage weighing 100 tons supports the somewhat unorthodox cast bringing the cost of the Berlin production to 3.5 million marks.
More than two million people attended the world tour performances excluding those who had the rare chance to see the production in Berlin before the current run of the opera ended.