Sketches of the splendid scenographies among the grandiose Egyptian temples, period posters such as the one for the representation at the Macerata Theater under the direction of Arturo Toscanini in 1988, figures of the protagonists of the opera from Aida to Radames.
There are many treasures collected and made available to the public in the digital campaign entitled # aida150 created by the Ministry of Culture on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the theater premiere of Aida, a dramatic work by Giuseppe Verdi and Antonio Ghislanzoni staged at the Khediviale Theater of the Cairo Opera on December 24, 1871.
The initiative will continue until February 8, the date on which, in 1872, the Aida was staged at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan for the European premiere. While it is true that the world premiere took place on the Cairo stage in 1871, the composer did not personally conduct the orchestra nor did he ever emphasize that debut as the actual première of the opera. Instead, it was the Scaliger representation of February 8, 1872 that the Busseto swan has always had most at heart and on which he lavished the utmost commitment and great care in setting up.
With this campaign, which will culminate on 17 March 2022 with the opening of the exhibition “Aida daughter of two worlds” at the Egyptian Museum in Turin, the MiC remembers both moments, accompanying the public on an exotic journey to the mysterious land of the ancient pharaohs through stage sketches, costume sketches, advertising posters, correspondence documents, musical sketches and operatic scores. Some of these archival documents allow us to reconstruct the creative process that led to the preparation of the opera masterpiece, while others reveal the historical anecdotes that have forever linked the cities of Milan and Cairo.
The campaign poster is a symbolic image: some paper testimonies have been digitally cut out and reassembled to create an emblematic poster, a collage with the Aida titles as they appeared on the original documents.
From the State Archives of Milan comes an autographed document bearing Verdi’s signature, while the only autographed musical sketches of the master are from the State Archives of Parma which, although they may sometimes appear hardly decipherable, reveal a lot about the master and the path that led him to give life to the Opera. A special contribution in the choice of documents came from Fabrizio Della Seta, former professor in the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia, Cremona branch.
A significant collaboration has come from the Ricordi Historical Archive, which has made accessible an immense patrimony of personal letters, iconographic material and orchestral scores of the publishing house of the same name specializing in musical editions which, among the many projects with theaters, musicians and composers, he also edited the publication of various operatic librettos of the Celeste Aida; from here come the sketches by Girolamo Magnani made for the sets of the Milanese première of 1872, the sketches with the imaginative costumes designed by Attilio Comelli for the show in 1906, also in Milan, or the correspondence between some of the “authors” of ‘Aida like Giuseppe Verdi, the Ricordi family, the librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni who reveals curious details dating back to the gestation period of the opera.
Another important contribution comes from the Salce Museum in Treviso, home of period advertising posters, which preserves several of the most original Aida posters, made at the turn of the two centuries. And, again, the National Institute of Verdian Studies of Parma, which took part in the campaign with the opera librettos of the Cairo premiere of 1871 in Italian, French and Arabic. (HANDLE).
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Source From: Ansa
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