do not go see aida in paris

to preface, i'm not an expert in operas. i've only seen a few operas before, but i have the privilege of being very familiar with other classical music and performance art forms. i'm also by no means a hard traditionalist, i was probably by far the youngest person in the theatre and i often appreciate modernized stagings that make the messaging more current.

we saw verdi's aida in paris a week ago, this is the rerun of shirin neshat's staging. i was really excited for it because it was the first time i've seen such a large production of opera. however i walked out of it actively upset and did not enjoy the experience. this is by no means a critique of the performers, if anything, the staging did the fantastic singing and orchestra dirty. its worth noting that i didn't buy a program because they cost 15 euros each.

tldr; it was too avante garde and was sheer confusing. it was not pretty and overall disappointing.

1. the styrofoam box. need i say more. why does the entire performance happen in such a distracting big shipping box that people put frozen fish in. i promise i thought really hard about the intentions behind it (which i suppose is the reaction it intends to evoke) but all it did was make me stare at how the singers tried to move around the big white box. i still can't think of a good explanation for this staging choice.

2. projections. during some segments there are b&w projections on the box. they sometimes depicted ritualistic scenes and/or war. the projections were distracting from the performance on stage, because they would be dubiously relevant and still relatively too modern looking. later research showed that the war projections was meant to replace actual war-winning in the opera and critique war. however, instead of feeling like a modernized message, it was like you are watching a movie and then got a psa ad break. it was too jarring. the videos weren't good, so whatever message it was trying to convey just wasn't that emotionally compelling either. (and the styrofoam box would be spinning so the projections on the corners just got distorted)

3. the plot got confusing, especially the first half. i walked in not knowing the plot very well (so that's on me) but the combination of projections and costumes and lack of set was very odd. i believe that opera, like all other perfomance art, is meant to be consumable blind. this was not. had to pull out the wikipedia between every act and retroactively be like, ohhhhhh so that what it meant. there are pieces that i still don't understand. like the whispering, the people with big pointy hats. the physical representation of aida's emotions via characters seems to be a jarringly more literal take that was unncessary. some of the messaging was so spelt out that it was more confusing. why did they sing for 5 minutes about sparing the war slaves and then immediately kill them.

4. the costuming. again, understand post-research that its meant to undo oreintalism. however, verdi's attempt at cultural context is all lost. it exchanged what could've been beautiful egyptian costuming (or even any other pretty costumes that amplified the gradeur of the court that the original had) for catholicism. it was also extremely incoherent. aida wore what looked like a 12 yr old's recital dress, the soldiers dressed like they're from the world wars, and amneris was at the met gala. not much else to be said except i didn't really like it.

5. nudity. i can't even lie the choice of nudity of the ethiopian prisoners was weird. i imagine a conversation in production that went like: ok so you should be upper body nude. however we respect your choices as actors so you can wear a tank top if you want. cool. i was looking for some messaging in the varying degrees of nudity but i didn't see it. they probably could've just not been stripped of their clothes in the first place.

i understand that some of these critiques are shallow, probably because the critique is of the staging rather than the very good opera itself. my expereince was genuinely painful. i don't know if its just parisans but people were already filing out during the bows, so maybe my opinion is shared. please save yourself from seeing this unless you just want an evening of feeling weird and confused.

"thought-provoking" art that only ends up inconclusive and confusing is not as meaningful as it thinks it is.