Publishings

 

With unpublished documentation curated by Saleh Abdoun (4, 1971)

Published on the occasion of the centenary of the première of Aida in Cairo, this volume benefited from the concrete cooperation of the then general manager of the Cairo Opera House, aviation officer and then Egyptian academic in Rome, Saleh Abdoun, who offered the Institute an unpublished documentary contribution (particularly concerning the correspondence exchanged at that time at the “Khedivial Opera House”, Cairo) along with his historical notation about the same theatre of the Egyptian capital, accompanied by photos.

These materials, collected by officers of the National Institute for Verdi Studies first of all by the general manager himself, Mario Medici – together with the correspondence published by Cesari and Luzio since 1913 and with the original iconography tracked down at the Paris Opera House archives, form a volume capable of organically reconstructing the circumstances that favoured the birth of the opera (some years in advance on the English monography of reference, curated by Hans Busch).

Focused in fact on a collection of 203 letters concerning the same topic, in chronological order and properly noted, the booklet also presents dozens of pages of interesting images along with useful reproductions from “libretti” and newspapers of that period.