Woke Aida

by Rabbi Jeremy Rosen

Image Credit: The Met: Live in HD – Verdi’s Aida (Encore Screening - 2018)

The opera Aida was composed by Giuseppe Verdi and first performed in 1871. The story is about a mythical Egyptian Kingdom in which the Egyptians have captured and enslaved Aida, an Ethiopian Princess after defeating her father’s armies. She is in love with the Egyptian military commander Radames who loves her in return. But Aida’s mistress, Amneris, Pharaoh’s daughter is also in love with Radames. And the poor general, loyal to the Pharaoh but in love with Aida has to choose. 

Radames defeats the Ethiopian army once again and Pharaoh appoints him as successor and decides he will marry his daughter Amneris. Radames is torn. At the same time Radames pleads for the life of Aida’s captured father Amonasro. The tension between the two women, the loyalty of Radames to Egypt and Aida’s to Ethiopia,  leads to subterfuge and deceit. Radames is wrongly convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Aida joins him in his death chamber, and the two lovers die in each other’s arms. Oh yes, Opera nearly always ends in death.

The opera was originally commissioned by the Khedive (the ruler) of Egypt to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. But political events got in the way and eventually it was performed in Cairo for this first time. The sets then and now are a celebration of Egyptian culture and have tried to recreate the ancient Egyptian world with costumes based on historical and cultural themes true to the history of Egypt. It was a great success and has remained so ever since. Verdi himself was upset by the fact this his work was seen as a glorification of Egyptian excess and corruption.  It was highly fashionable due to the burgeoning European interest in archeology.

As with many of Verdi’s operas there are some magnificent areas and musical highlights interspersed with dull narrative singing. But always spiced up with magnificent choreography, and design that help create a magical atmosphere that’s a real delight and not to be missed.

Aida this year has been performed at the Metropolitan Opera of New York. Where I had the good fortune to attend what was a truly magnificent, unforgettable  performance. The music, the sets, the choreography was superb. Only one thing got in the way of  a heavenly experience. It was a stupid and irrelevant innovation; another example of current woke ideology degrading instead of elevating underlining the attempted suicide of the Western cultural world. Where the mind police are so busy rooting out, censoring or simply making fools of themselves to conform to current political correctness. The Metropolitan Opera went out of its way to add an element that was not only out of place but a pathetic and a poor reflection on the people responsible for it.

I’m referring to the fact that this new element had nothing to do with the plot or the music another element was introduced as a salve or sop to those frightened of being accused either of cultural appropriation or offending hypersensitivities. As if people were incapable of seeing things within a historical context. We all know that the Western powers England, Belgium, France, Germany all took advantage of declining and corrupt Egyptian ruling cast to grab as much ancient artifacts and archaeological treasures from a weak an incompetent series of Egyptian rulers who themselves sold off the national patrimony for personal gain, lining their own coffers and enriching themselves at the expense of their own subjects. 

In this production we are presented with an innovation not previously seen. A background theme of actors and actresses dressed in the gear of archaeological adventurers making silent records of what they have or want to confiscate and transport home for financial and political gain. And we see them in the course of the evening in the background carrying off artifacts of Egyptian culture or front stage sitting on stool recording details in a notebook for future reference perhaps. Totally out of place visually let alone intellectually. So that the message becomes patently clear. We righteously claim  that we are trying to excuse ourselves for the sins of the past by inserting an important nod to the fact that a lot of monkey business was going on under the colonial regimes. As it aways has under almost every culture of the world since the earliest of times. Much of the looting and adorns many of the museums of the west. But then which government of what state, can honestly claim to be the unsullied guardian and heir of their  past?

Of course, I do not approve of looting or taking advantage of the weak, especially if the victims and perpetrators are one’s own people. But what has this genuflecting got to do with a wonderful piece of entertainment? And why just now? There was a time when one could draw a distinction between entertainment and politics but now its infecting everything. 

Jeremy Rosen

May 2025

###

Jeremy Rosen was born in Manchester, England, the eldest son of Rabbi Kopul Rosen and Bella Rosen. Rosen's thinking was strongly influenced by his father, who rejected fundamentalist and obscurantist approaches in favour of being open to the best the secular world has to offer while remaining committed to religious life. He was first educated at Carmel College, the school his father had founded based on this philosophical orientation. At his father's direction, Rosen also studied at Be'er Yaakov Yeshiva in Israel (1957–1958 and 1960). He then went on to Merkaz Harav Kook (1961), and Mir Yeshiva (1965–1968) in Jerusalem, where he received semicha from Rabbi Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz in addition to Rabbi Dovid Povarsky of Ponevezh and Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Shapiro of Yeshivat Be'er Ya'akov. In between Rosen attended Cambridge University (1962–1965), graduating with a degree in Moral Sciences.