With the safety precautions imposed by the Egyptian government on all activities to diminish the dispersal of COVID-19, Cairo Opera House presented opera Aida outdoors for the first time in the open air theatre on 28th and 29th of May.
El Tally: We faced problems because of the large number of extras and foreign actors with the COVID-19 restrictions
Hisham El Tally, the director of opera Aida, said the opera was scheduled for this time initially. However, there were two problems, the first was because of COVID-19 restrictions with the large number of extras in the show, so it was suggested that the opera should be in open air format. Another problem was the dependency on some foreign actors to perform in Opera Aida, which imposed some difficulties to have them in Egypt because of travel restrictions. “Therefore, there was a main dependency on Egyptian actors and we had to minimize the duration of the opera to fit the tight schedule and shortage in cast”.
El Tally: Scenes with more movement were out top choice for the outdoors performance
“After we knew that the opera should be shortened, the decision was made to perform excerpts of Opera Aida on the open air theater”, El-Tally added to “Trendify”. The criteria of choosing the scenes was mainly dependent on the scenes with more movement. “We also wanted to highlight the happy moments of the show”. While the primary scene in the original version included execution, the one in the shortened version was a victory one to convey happiness and delight to people in such hard times like corona.
Directing the indoor operas was much easier than the outdoor experience, according to El Tally since in the indoors the theatre is equipped with all that makes a show go smoothly where the lights are built in some way, the change rooms are close to the stage and the whole setting is specialized and prepared for shows. However in outdoors “we build all this from scratch”.
Despite all the challenges outdoors, it was a lot enjoyable to the audience just like the summer cinema. "For me this is challenging but rewarding to work on for the first time", El Tally declared. The setting of Pharaonic and ancient Egyptian decorations outside was so realistic and people loved it, especially that Opera Aida is an original Egyptian work.
According to Ghada Yassen, stage manager of the latest opera Aida, the implementation in the open air theatre came as a response to the imposed restrictions on activities, whereby, the opera took place under all precautions of safe spaces, obligatory masks and the rest of instructions of prime ministry with regard to COVID-19.
Yassen: The fact that Opera Aida’s main story was originally written as an open air one made it most suitable for implementation in the open air theatre
Yassen added that the fact that Opera Aida’s main story was originally written as an open air one made it most suitable for implementation in the open air theatre. However, the challenges of managing an open air stage were more than those of managing the indoors one that is set up and provided with all facilities to guarantee highest degrees of control on the performance.
“While the original opera Aida is to be played for about three hours and half, this was not suitable to the current situation where theaters should be closed by 9 pm” Yassen said. So, the opera included only specific parts from the original one where it included only the first two chapters.
The original opera Aida ends in a tragic scene where Radames reveals a secret Aida and plan for a war, the version performed on the open air theatre ended in a different scene where Radames went to Habasha, achieved victory and Aida found out that her father was one of the war’s prisoners, Yassen said in description of the differences in the between outdoors and indoors opera.
Yassen: Stage operation was my main challenge
“My main challenge outdoors was in operating the stage” Yassen mentioned to “Trendify” where there is a walkie talkie through which there was communication with members of different crews and take control of the stage actors’ preparations before they go on stage.
Yassen added “the difficulty in open air stage is that there is no microphones through which I can call the actors or any member of the show so I try to make the crew members close to me after they change their clothes in the inner rooms and fix their microphones while making them stay by my side until their cue comes then control the operation of their microphones when they go up stage”.