How Postcolonialism Ruined Verdi’s “Aida”

Reviewing the New York Metropolitan Opera’s recent run of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida—set in ancient Egypt—Heather Mac Donald notes the presence on the stage, “at random moments,” of people dressed as 19th- or early-20th-century archaeologists. Mac Donald discerned from the program notes that these “khakied supernumeraries,” who don’t interact with the other characters and distract from the opera’s story and music, are “the vehicle through which [the director] Michael Mayer pays homage to the Ur-theorist of colonialist oppression: Edward Said.” To Said, European archaeology, and study of the Middle East, was an act of theft, as was Aida itself—despite the fact that it was commissioned by Ismail Pasha, the ruler of Egypt.