Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tpknm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-04T10:25:26.085Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Claiming Ancient Egypt: Operetta ‘Aida and the Making of Modern Egyptians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2025

Carmen Gitre
Carmen Gitre*
Affiliation:
Department of History, College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On 24 December 1871, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida premiered in Cairo’s Khedivial Opera House. The Khedive of Egypt, Ismail, had commissioned Verdi to compose the opera as part of a larger program of urban renewal that had peaked with the Suez Canal’s inauguration in November 1869. Wide boulevards, landscaped gardens, and luxury hotels of iron, steel, and the improved glass of the nineteenth century modernized sections of Cairo and Alexandria. In anticipation of the many guests who planned to attend the canal’s inauguration, Ismail funded the construction of a road leading directly from Cairo to the pyramids and patronized the construction of a Khedivial Opera House.1

Type
Article
Information
Theatre Survey , First View , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Society for Theatre Research, Inc

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Notes

1 Sattin, Anthony, Lifting the Veil: British Society in Egypt 1768–1956 (London: J. M. Dent, 1988), 183–4Google Scholar.

2 Sadgrove, Philip, The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century: 1799–1882 (Reading, Berkshire: Ithaca Press, 2007), 128 Google Scholar.

3 Sayyid Ali Isma‘il, ed., Al-Tarikh al-Masrah fi Misr fi Qarn al-Tasi‘a ‘Ashar [History of theatre in Egypt in the nineteenth century] ([1997] Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-misriyya al ‘Amma lil Kitab, 2005), 126.

4 Sadgrove, Egyptian Theatre, 130, 137.

5 Verdi’s “Aida”: The History of an Opera in Letters and Documents, comp. and trans. Hans Busch (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978). A summary of the opera goes like this: as war between Egypt and Ethiopia looms, the warrior Radames is chosen to lead the Egyptian army to battle. Radames, the audience learns, is secretly in love with Aida, a captured Ethiopian princess who is a slave in the Egyptian king’s court, and though she loves him, too, so does the Egyptian king’s daughter, Amneris. Suspicious that Aida may be a rival, Amneris tricks Aida into believing Radames has died in conflict. Aida’s distress at the news of Radames’s death proves Amneris’s suspicions correct, and she becomes a target of Amneris’s fury. Aida’s fortune worsens when the victorious Radames returns to Thebes with her father, Amonasro, as a captive. In the third act, as Aida sings longingly for her homeland, her father appears and asks her to exploit Radames’s affection for her to gather information about the Egyptian army. He hides and listens when Radames arrives and promises to marry Aida, willingly revealing the Egyptian army’s plans at her request. Suddenly, Amneris appears, having caught Radames revealing the army’s secrets. She summons the guards, accusing him of treason, and Radames is condemned to be buried alive. As the vault where he will die is sealed, Radames discovers Aida awaiting him in the crypt, prepared to die with him.

6 Gitre, Carmen M. K., Acting Egyptian: Theater, Identity, and Political Culture in Cairo, 1869–1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

7 Ellis, Matthew H., Desert Borderland: The Making of Modern Egypt and Libya (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018)Google Scholar; Hanley, Will, Identifying with Nationality: Europeans, Ottomans, and Egyptians in Alexandria (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Reid, Donald Malcolm, Contesting Antiquity in Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2015), 1–2 Google Scholar.

9 See, for example, Ancient Egypt in the Modern Imagination: Art, Literature and Culture, ed. Eleanor Dobson and Nichola Tonks (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020); Fleischhack, Maria, Narrating Ancient Egypt: The Representation of Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century and Early-Twentieth-Century Fantastic Fiction (Frankfurt an Main: Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fleischhack, Maria, “Possession, Trance, and Reincarnation: Confrontations with Ancient Egypt in Edwardian Fiction,” Victoriographies 7.3 (2017): 257–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Margaret Goega, “Modern Receptions of Ancient Egypt since Champollion” (presentation: Modern Egyptian Studies Forum, Philadelphia, 27 October 2022).

10 Abdou, Ehaab D., “‘Confused by multiple deities, ancient Egyptians embraced monotheism’: Analysing Historical Thinking and Inclusion in Egyptian History Textbooks,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 48.2 (2016): 226–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abou, Ehaab D., “Construction(s) of the Nation in Egyptian Textbooks: Towards an Understanding of Societal Conflict,” in (Re)Constructing Memory: Education, Identity, and Conflict, ed. Bellino, and James, H. Williams (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2017), 75–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ehaab Abdou, “Reconciling Egyptians with Their Ancient Past?” Mada Masr (21 December 2018), https://madamasr.com/en/2018/12/21/opinion/u/reconciling-egyptians-with-their-ancient-past/, accessed 10 January 2019.

11 Colla, Elliot, Conflicted Antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007)Google Scholar ; Lorenzon, Marta and Zermani, Isabel, “Common Ground: Community Archaeology in Egypt, Interaction between Population and Cultural Heritage,” Journal of Community Archaeology & Heritage 3.3 (2016): 183–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reid, Contesting Antiquity; Donald Malcolm Reid, Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

12 Hassan, Fekri A., “Selling Egypt: Encounters at Khan el-Khalili,” and Fayza Haykal, “Egypt’s Past Regenerated by Its Own People,” both in Consuming Ancient Egypt, ed. MacDonald, Sally and Rice, Michael (London: UCL Press, Institute of Archaeology, 2003), 111–22Google Scholar and 123–38, respectively.

13 See, e.g., Carruthers, William, Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022)Google Scholar; Doyon, Wendy, “The Poetics of Egyptian Museum Practice,” British Museum Studies in Egypt and Sudan 10 (2008): 1–37 Google Scholar; Riggs, Christina, Treasured: How Tutankhamun Shaped a Century (New York: PublicAffairs, 2021)Google Scholar.

14 Bergeron, Katherine, “Verdi’s Egyptian Spectacle: On the Colonial Subject of Aïda ,” Cambridge Opera Journal 14.1–2 (2002): 149–59Google Scholar; Locke, , “Beyond the Exotic: How ‘Eastern’ Is Aida?” Cambridge Opera Journal 17.2 (2005): 105–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mestyan, Adam, Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017)Google Scholar; Robinson, Paul, “Is Aïda an Orientalist Opera?” Cambridge Opera Journal 5.2 (1993): 133–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Said, Edward W., “The Imperial Spectacle,” Grand Street 6.2 (1987): 82–104 Google Scholar; Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1993); Verardi, Giovanni, “On Edward W. Said’s Aida ,” Annali dell’Università degli studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”: Rivista del Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici e del Dipartimento di Studi e Ricerche su Africa e Paesi Arabi 56.4 (1996): 524–35Google Scholar.

15 Said, Culture and Imperialism, 114; italics in the original.

16 Robinson, “Is Aïda an Orientalist Opera?”

17 Bergeron, “Verdi’s Egyptian Spectacle,” 150.

18 Ibid., 159.

19 Gitre, Acting Egyptian; Mestyan, Arab Patriotism.

20 ‘Ali al-Ra’i, Al-Kumidiya al-Murtajala fi al-Masrah al-Misri [Improvised comedy in Egyptian theatre] (Cairo: Dar al-Hilal, 1968); Amin, Dina A., Alfred Farag and Egyptian Theater: The Poetics of Disguise, with Four Short Plays and a Monologue (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Fahmy, Ziad, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gitre, Acting Egyptian; Margaret Litvin, Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); Khuri-Makdisi, Ilham, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010)Google Scholar; Mestyan, Arab Patriotism; Karin van Nieuwkerk, “A trade like any other”: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, [1995] 2006); Powell, Eve Troutt, A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

21 Amin, Dina, “Egyptian Theater: Reconstructing Performance Spaces,” Arab Studies Journal 14.2 (2006), 78–100 Google Scholar; Gitre, Carmen, “Taking Comedy Seriously: Theater in the 1920s,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Egyptian History, ed. Baron, Beth and Culang, Jeffrey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), 402–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 417.

22 Mohammad Yusuf Najm, al-Masrahiyya fi al-dab al-‘Arabi al-hadith [The play in modern Arabic literature], 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1999), 2: 87–133. Unfortunately the details of these performances are exceedingly difficult if not impossible to locate, as they are mentioned only tangentially in brief notices about performances.

23 Askew, Kelly M., Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 5Google Scholar.

24 Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, 2d ed., ed. J. Rutherford ([1990] London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998), 222–37.

25 Colla, Conflicted Antiquities, 132.

26 Reid, Whose Pharaohs? 112, 288.

27 Colla, Conflicted Antiquities, 144.

28 Ibid., 125.

29 Ibid., 124.

30 Ibid., 96.

31 Vatikiotis, P. J., The Modern History of Egypt (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 79 Google Scholar.

32 Mashrabiya screens had actually been outlawed by Mehmet ‘Ali during his tenure as governor. See Tamraz, Nihal S., Nineteenth-Century Cairene Houses and Palaces (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1994), 38–9Google Scholar.

33 Jean-Marcel Humbert, “Les Expositions Universelles de 1867 et 1878 et la création d’Aïda,” in La France et L’Égypte à l’Époque des Vice-Rois 1805–1882, ed. Daniel Panzac and André Raymond (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2002), 289–309, at 298–9.

34 A salamlik was a greeting area exclusively for men. It was a domestic space typically found in upper-class and upper-middle-class homes.

35 Colla, Conflicted Antiquities, 103.

36 Sadgrove, Egyptian Theatre, 9, 101.

37 Quoted in Colla, Conflicted Antiquities, 127, 128.

38 Ibid., 128–9.

39 Ibid., 129.

40 ‘Abdullah Abu al-Su‘ud, Tarjamat al-obera al-masma bi ism ‘Aida [Translation of the work called Aida]; libretto, unpublished manuscript (1869), 1; CA 852 G426aA, Archives and Special Collections, American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Arabic sources are my own.

41 Starting with Tewedros II (Emperor of Ethiopia during 1855–68) through the early twentieth century, Ethiopia’s leaders pursued an internal policy to unite Ethiopia. It is possible that Su‘ud’s concern with identifying Aida and her father as Abyssinians was an attempt to resist any anachronism in the story by focusing on a specific region they were from instead of calling it Ethiopia, but his motive is not entirely clear.

42 Su‘ud, Tarjamat al-obera . . . ‘Aida, 4–6, 15, 57.

43 Sadgrove, Egyptian Theatre, 126.

44 Selim al-Naqqash, al-Jinan (1875), 521, in Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 87–133, at 94.

45 Ibid., 522, in Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 94–5.

46 Selim al-Naqqash, “Al-Riwayat al-khediyuwiha al-tashkhisiyya” [Distinct khedivial plays], al-Jinan (1875), in Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 46.

47 Gitre, Acting Egyptian, 138 n. 107.

48 Ibid., 45.

49 Marun al-Naqqash is widely referred to as the father of modern Arabic drama.

50 Moosa, Matti, The Origins of Modern Arabic Fiction (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1983), 35 Google Scholar.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Naqqash, al-Jinan (11 August 1875), 39–47, in Khuri-Makdisi, Eastern Mediterranean, 64.

54 Zachs, Fruma, “Text and Context: The Image of the Merchant in Early Nahda Fiction,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 101 (2011): 481–94Google Scholar, at 482. Al-Jinan was one of the first magazines to publish original narrative fiction, including novels. The Arabic term for novels, riwayat, was also used for playscripts in the early years of stage theatre, when no other word existed to differentiate them.

55 Naqqash, al-Jinan (11 August 1875), 41, in Khuri-Makdisi, Eastern Mediterranean, 64. The bracketed transliterations are from Khuri-Makdisi.

56 Ibid., in ibid., 65–6.

57 Ibid., in ibid., 66.

58 Selim al-Naqqash (1875), in Al-Tarikh al-Masrah, ed. Isma‘il, 126.

59 Ibid.

60 Selim al-Naqqash (1882), in Sadgrove, Egyptian Theatre, 155.

61 al-Tarikh al-Masrah, ed. Isma‘il, 126; Moosa, Origins, 34.

62 Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 96.

63 Naqqash, “Al-Riwayat al-khediyuwiha,” in Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 46. There may have been some fluctuation in troupe numbers, as an article in al-Ahram in 1877 noted that “he has eleven actors and four actresses in the troupe”—no small feat, as it was not easy to get women to perform onstage. Al-Ahram 21 (28 September 1877); in Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 97.

64 Naqqash, “Al-Riwayat al-khediyuwiha,” in Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 46.

65 Selim al-Naqqash, ‘Aida: Tarjamat dthat khamsa fusuul [Aida: Translation of five acts] libretto, unpublished manuscript (1908), 2; HCL/003364954-METS, Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

66 M[ohammad]. M[ustafa]. Badawi, Modern Arabic Drama in Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 54, 207; al-Naqqash, ‘Aida.

67 Naqqash, ‘Aida, III.3, 30 (على أن العين بصيرة و اليد قصيرة). All subsequent quotations are from this edition and cited parenthetically in the text.

68 (و كما قيل: …احذر عدوّك مرةٌ واحذر صديقك الف مرة فلربما خان الصديق فكان اعلم بالمضرّه).

69 Letter from Rouchdy, 1886, Egyptian National Archive, Maglis al-Wuzara’, al-Magmu’a al-Ashghal, Mahfuza 1/2, Cairo, Egypt.

70 Hasan ‘Atiyya, ed., Al-Masrah al-Misri [Egyptian theatre] (repr. Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-misriyya al ‘Amma lil Kitab, 1997), 147–8; Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 110. In 1887, they performed fifteen plays in addition to ‘Aida during the spring season in the Opera House.

71 Allah, Izis Fath and Kamil, Mahmud, Salama Hijazi (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 2002), 172–3Google Scholar.

72 Glasser, Jonathan, The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 84–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Wilkinson, Jane, “Egyptianizing Shakespeare: 1882–1944,” in Shakespeare e il Novecento, ed. Lombardo, Agostino (Rome: Bulzoni Editore, 2002), 523–53Google Scholar, at 528.

74 Badawi, Modern Arabic Drama, 54; Naqqash, ‘Aida, 3–4, 52.

75 Wilkinson, “Egyptianizing Shakespeare,” 528–9.

76 Al-Ahram (1887), in Al-Masrah al-Misri, ed. ‘Atiya, 68–9.

77 Ibid., 77.

78 Ibid., 76.

79 Ibid., 77.

80 Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 87–133.

81 Al-Ahram (27 October 1914).

82 Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 155, 157, 169.

83 Al-Tarikh al-Masrah, ed. Isma‘il, 147–8.

84 His troupe performed ‘Aida in Asyut in 1889. Al-Ahram 3489, 3491, 3495, 3496, in Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 169.

85 Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 1: 178.

86 Al-Ahram 1342 (10 March 1882), in Sadgrove, Egyptian Theatre, 155.

87 Misr 2 (6 July 1877), in ibid., 137.

88 Review in al-Qahira (1887), in Al-Masrah al-Misri, ed. ‘Atiya, 69.

89 Al-Ahram (1887), in ibid., 76.

90 Al-Qahira (1887), in ibid., 78.

91 Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 2: 129.

92 Najm, al-Masrahiyya, 2: 94, 99, 105–7, 111, 114–18, 121, 123, 125–9, 131.

93 Gitre, Acting Egyptian, 81–2.

94 Badawi, Modern Arabic Drama, 54.