I get along really well with the artistic director and conductor of Berkeley Opera, Jonathan Khuner. Although I think we have some aesthetic differences, there is a lot we do agree on, particularly in terms of shaking up accepted performance techniques in opera. He does it musically and I do it dramatically, but we discuss each other’s interpretation with an openness and flexibility that actually makes musical-dramatic collaborations seem natural. (As I was asking Jonathan to shorten a fermata for dramatic purposes, my friend Cori Ellison said, “Don’t try that kind of thing at San Francisco Opera!”)

 

But we do seem to be at a disagreement upon one bit of staging: a sex scene between Ramfis and the priestess during Act II, scene I. On the downstairs level of the set, Amneris is getting made up with a sense of erotic anticipation for Radames’s arrival; upstairs, that erotic longing is turned into very uncomfortable and unenjoyable intercourse between one of the country’s most powerful figureheads (Dick Cheney meets Ted Haggard for us) and a woman we see in the first act as a mouthpiece of the system. This happens during the grotesque little dance that is usually a happy “dance of the Moorish slaves,” which must be one of the ugliest ideas in the opera. Part of the consideration for staging the scene in our way grew out of a wish to bring to life that sense of shameless exploitation of one person for the pleasure of another, more powerful person.

 

There are other considerations related to the characterizations of everyone involved in this scene: Amneris, downstairs and clueless to Ramfis’s abuse of power, strikes us as all the more sheltered and naive in Act II, making her journey towards the total disillusionment in Act IV an even greater one. And the “unofficial,” personal side of Ramfis is revealed to us in this brief scene in a very illuminating way--it is very hard to look at him in his official context in the following scene after this other side of him has been so bluntly exposed. Finally, the priestess, after seeming to be a dignified and free-thinking woman in the temple scene, is also shown to be a cog in the machine of this country.

 

I should also add that this is perhaps our most Egyptian detail in this “fairy-tale” country of ours, as temple priestesses in ancient Egypt were used for the sexual gratification of the priests.

 

And one note further: the hypocrisy inherent in showing Ramfis take advantage of the priestess while Radames’s downfall is due to an illicit affair is not only a resonant contemporary issue in our country but a common feature of countries whose power and sense of entitlement blind their sense of decency and equality.

 

 

I also have to wonder why this scene involving sex is the one raising some eyebrows: why aren’t the scenes of gruesome violence the disturbing ones? We have plenty in our production, from the very first scene to the very last (in our production, Amonasro’s army overthrows the country and kills the king, Ramfis, the priestess, and everyone else in the system). Aida is quite literally on the brink of suicide from the beginning of the opera, and she and Amneris both suffer disturbing beatings at the hand of their fathers. So why is it sex that ruffles feathers? And in fact, why are sex and violence constantly linked activities in our culture, with sex somehow considered more dangerous?

 

 

Violence, I think, also belongs on stage more than anywhere else, because it is clearly a representation of violence no matter how realistically it is depicted. That representation can never “satisfy” us in the sadistic way that violent images both repel and seduce us in film and photography. Our imagination and critical faculties are much more active when the violence is obviously “staged” than when it is depicted within the illusion of reality promoted by film and photography.

 

So my current impulse is to keep the scene, despite how sure I am that some people will be repulsed by it. Perhaps that repulsion can be transformed to critical engagement before the end of the scene--at least, in an ideal world, that would happen.