Автор: kdk
Дата: 19-02-04 15:51
Druga, ne chak tolkova smeshna istoria:
Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt, had built a grand opera-house at Cairo, and, thinking to emulate Western potentates as an art patron, he commissioned Verdi to write an opera expressly for him. It was to be an opera, "if not of a national character, at least of a local nature, and to a certain extent of a patriotic colour." When Verdi accepted the commission, he asked a suggestion for a subject. In reply he received a sketch prepared by Mariette Bey, the great French Egyptologist, based on "historical and archaeological details of very powerful and very novel character." It was only a sketch, but Verdi was impressed by the grandeur of its general design, and by the conception of the judgment scene, to which we owe the strange and powerfully dramatic tableau which forms the denouement...
..."Aida" was first produced, at Cairo, on December 24, 1871. When Verdi announced that his score was finished, he was offered money, honours, and decorations if he would go to Egypt and conduct it in person. But Verdi was quite content with the £4000 already paid for the work. Like Rossini and Grieg, he had a horror of the sea, and nothing would tempt him to make the voyage. And when professional critics went to Cairo to witness the performance and to report home, he was disgusted. Thus, to one he wrote, on the eve of his departure:
"It seems to me that art looked at in this way is no longer art, but a trade, a party of pleasure, a hunt, anything that can be run after, to which it is desired to give, if not success, at least notoriety at any price... I always call to mind with joy the early days of my career, the time when, with hardly a friend, with no one to talk about me, without preparation, without influence of any sort, I presented myself before the public with my works, and very happy if I could succeed in producing some slight favourable impression. Now what a piece of work about an opera!!! This is deplorable, deeply deplorable."
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