The impressive, ancient St Margaret’s Quarry provides the backdrop for an opera performance each year. Enclosed by massive sandstone walls, one of the largest and certainly most beautiful “opera halls” in the world, you are transported into a world of its own.
See “Aida” this summer in this setting. “Attending” is too weak a verb to convey the monumentality and uniqueness of this performance. From the first minute you are delighted to be transported to a strange world. A world of unprecedented glitz and glamour.
Golden elephant
Photo:
Nina Meyer
“Thanks is my soul, because you surprise me again” (Hans-Christoph Neuert)
Director Thaddeus Strasberger has created a production whose creativity cannot be topped. Primarily a game of fire and water – everywhere and in combinations. Torches, rings of fire, glowing fountains. You don’t know where to look, and open your mouth in front of this scene, even if you don’t know your neighbor, push him, with incredible, joyful emotions, “It’s beautiful !” and “Look!”
The sudden appearance of an oversized golden elephant and the center stage sarcophagus will leave you completely speechless.
Opera stars appear in this splendor draped in enchanting gowns designed by Giuseppe Balella. A glittering beginning in turquoise-gold-white, its delicacy underscored by a fiery orange-gold, is replaced by theatrical costumes in black and gold, a deliberately mismatched color to stand out, Amneris theater red.
Ida and Amneris fight for Radames
Photo:
Nina Meyer
“Numi, Pieta!” – Gods have mercy!
Amneris serves as a love match for Ida, an Ethiopian princess who is held captive as a slave in Egypt. Rayhan Bryce-Davies plays the vengeful enemy, a voice to remember, and dramatizes the context of Aida. Of course, it is about love, which represents the true drama of creation, which is perhaps the most beautiful feeling on earth, and the most painful when unfulfilled.
Soprano Lea Crosetto conveys this melancholy, this longing for spiritual salvation in a fascinating, goosebump-inducing performance with surprisingly contrasting highs and lows for the audience. Jorge Puerta impresses as Radames, the Egyptian general who is Aida’s lover. A love that shouldn’t be, that shouldn’t be.
Photo:
Nina Meyer
Death is better than separation
Aida and Radem’s entanglement seems hopeless from the start. Should Aida be loyal to her motherland and father over her love for Radames? In desperation she tries and fails, otherwise how!
The Only Way and the Straw: Hope for a Shared Life in Death and the Afterlife. “Not without each other!” It also means risk of emotional threat from others. The final image: a large sarcophagus, dramatically illuminated in black and gold. You believe the illusion, and you don’t doubt for a moment that Portoro marble, the cold stone, despite its uniqueness, beauty and elegance, will bury everything. What remains is hope for something, even if it is uncertainty.
Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida” is one of the most mesmerizing and engaging performances St. Margaret’s has ever presented. Absolutely world-class in every way, it’s a cultural gift you can proudly send to the world.
Full screen
1/37
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
Photo: Nina Meyer
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A world-class “Aida” performance at St. Margaret’s Quarry.
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” opened Monday with a dress rehearsal at the Quarry in St. Margarethen. Naturally with a premiere cast, the audience at the first show, mainly from Burgenland, were treated to an operatic experience the world had rarely seen before.
