AIDA

28 AIDA A Contemporary Reinterpretation of Aida by Giuseppe Verdi 1871 Harvard GSD STU 1300 Dream Factory | Fall 2025 Instructor: Elena Manferdini

29 Contemporary Interpretation Aida is an opera about displaced love, loyalty, and the cost of war, following an enslaved Ethiopian princess Aida and an Egyptian commander Radamès caught between passion and duty. Their struggle unfolds against rising political conflict, ending in a tragic sacrifice that transforms love into a fi nal act of transcendence. The contemporary reinterpretation of Aida reframes its love tragedy as an allegory of systemic repression in a globalized age, where colonizing nations, multinational corporations, and industrial powers dominate while Indigenous cultures, fragile environments, and personal identities struggle to endure. Set in a plastic recycling plant, conquest is measured not by armies but by commodities and resource flows. Within this architecture of domination, the reinterpretation continues the original opera’s inquiry into how power shapes identity, but extends it further: to what extent can the oppressed resist systemic forces? What choices remain once injustice is recognized? What is the cost of ending exploitation? And can love or individual freedom survive when overwhelming institutions absorb or silence resistance? Aida Industrial residue + natural decay Off -white, muted green, orange, brown Suff ocating plastics Artifi cial leather Fragmented fabric Coral-like face covering Aida, a worker at a plastic recycling factory Amneris, founder of a sustainability research institution Aida, Ethiopian princess enslaved by Egypt Amneris, daughter of the Pharaoh Amneris Elegant minimal silhouette White, champagne gold, scarlet red Silk, pleated fabric Metallic lace face mesh Luxury & blindness Radamès, a corporate offi cer Amonasro, the local community representative Pharaoh, CEO of a multinational corporation Ramfi s, a lobbyist Radamès, Captain of the Guard Amonasro, King of Ethiopia Pharaoh Ramfi s, High Priest 1871 2025 Axon | Act II in Teatro alla Scala Axon | Act IV in Teatro alla Scala Physical Model (1'=1/4") Physical Model | Act II Physical Model | Act III

30 Visibility, Privilege, and Access ACT I The first stage's simple and modest atmosphere sets the tone of a cold factory. The position of Amneris and Aida is inscribed into a hierarchy built directly into the architecture. The steps also create circulation paths that allow performers to move fl uidly across and through the set without relying solely on conventional backstage routes. Across all four acts, actor movement and set changes are visible to the audience. The stage curtain never closes: scene changes become part of the performance. This transparency reinforces the concept of a machine, where there is no real front, and all labor, surveillance, and motion go without stop. ACT II The dense tropical vegetation, glowing under engineered light, creates a stage of artifi cial abundance. The triangular truss system—an inverted echo of the Egyptian pyramid—presses downward toward the unseen workers below, a geometric symbol of vertical power and systemic oppression. Above, the Egyptian troops—reinterpreted as fashion models, corporate staff , and non-local elites—enter along the raised “green carpet, ” treating the factory as a runway for imperial display. The greenhouse becomes a stage for showcasing the spoils of conquest. The illusion breaks when the lower level is revealed. This vertical separation between the greenhouse spectacle and the waste below establishes the opera’s central architectural theme—a world split by visibility, privilege, and access, yet mechanically and inexorably connected. ACT III Act III stages the opera’s turning point—Aida and Radamès confront the consequences of their love, and Radamès decides to help Aida and her father escape. Architecturally, this act takes place in the interstitial side spaces carved between the large sets of Act II and Act IV. Audiences are brought to the psychological and political “backstage” of the story—a location for a secret meeting, a confession, and ultimately a failed attempt at freedom. On the lower level, the Nile is reimagined as an assembly line, its mechanized flow evoking a river whose current is driven not by nature but by labor. The assembly line and a staircase slide in from each side, forming a stratifi ed composition that evokes an “underworld”: the hidden dimension beneath the spectacle of Act II’s greenhouse. ACT IV Act IV returns to the factory’s core. Ensembles become live components of the machine they have served, while trapped within its geometry. Stark yellowrenders the upper level with the same artifi cial optimism in Act II, but stripped of illusion. Below, Radames and Aida enter a small house- shaped light, a fi nal symbol of refuge, which soon becomes their tomb. As the trial begins, the house inverts, fl ipping upside down as Aida reveals herself in the tomb, trapping the lovers physically in their coffin and metaphysically in the system, burying those who attempted to resist it. In the final moment, the lights fade to darkness. Then, in the silence, plastic trash falls from the ceiling, creating loud noises of collapse, and a trace of hope that even the most totalizing machine can break. Physical Model (1'=1/4")