by Giuseppe Verdi
libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni

PACIFIC SYMPHONY, 2017

scenic design by GRACE LAUBACHER - directed by MARY BIRNBAUM - lighting design by ANSHUMAN BHATIA - costume design by KATIE WILSON - choreographed by JOHN TODD

photos by CHERYL WALSH / NICK KOON

This streamlined adaptation of Verdi’s classic opera takes place in a concert hall, with stripped-down scenery and props. In the story, Aida faces an agonizing choice between between her love of an Egyptian general and her Ethiopian monarch father. The show is staged in a sandbox, where sand has been carefully sculpted into the monuments of ancient Egypt - the pyramids, a Sphinx, an obelisk, which are obliterated halfway through the performance by the invading army of Ethopians. The sand sculptures, in their fragility, embody a delicate poise between personal and political - at once a child’s playspace, and a container for the prized monuments of a civilization, it gives us the duality of Aida: a daughter with a legacy to uphold, who at the same time has her own loyalties, desires, and political agency.