To our greatest regret, we are unable to show Benedikt von Peter's production due to the pandemic. The performances on 22 and 29 January as well as those on 4 February 2022 will be shown in concert version. We ask for your understanding!

“Amore, sommissione, dolcezza” were the words used by Verdi to describe his eponymous heroine Aida, an epitome of love, docility and tenderness. Aida joins a list of female protagonists in the art of the 19th century who were not so much flesh-and-blood characters as objects of yearning and a projection screen for male chauvinist dreams and inevitably ended up dying of a broken heart. Aida is no different here, although, in a departure from the format employed in Verdi’s previous operas, AIDA offers an antithesis to doomed love in the form of Amneris. “Molto vivacità” is how Verdi describes her in his list of characters. Amneris is a bundle of vitality. She fights like a lioness to defend her love and is capable of having a solid, committed relationship. Radames, on the other hand, wavering between Aida and Amneris, cannot bring himself to opt for real life. He surrenders to his dreams and fantasies of having an exotic woman from distant climes. At the same time he’s pursuing an ambitious career within a rigid, ideological system. In public he quickly acquires star status. Yet he quickly sees that he cannot escape the pressure exerted by society, not even in his private life. And so it is that his dream of love becomes a matter of public interest.