Talk:2021-2022/@comment-216.164.232.72-20200619150058/@comment-142.255.44.61-20200620235142

You are either misinformed or disingenuous, judging by your description of some "controversy around casting singers of non-African descent in the Egyptian roles."

If by Egyptian roles you mean the Ethiopian roles in Aida (definitely not Egyptian, but what else could you mean?) there is no controversy: There is instead universal agreement on the now standard principle that that opera (or any opera, for that mattter) works perfectly well without blackface. An entirely different attitude than what you imply.

NOBODY has ever suggested only African singers should sing those roles. And again, I think you meant the Ethiopian roles. In the confounded times blackface was used, the Egyptian roles were assumed to be white, so there was never any controversy there either.

Since Aida's Egypt is proxy for Europe, in a drama which fits Verdi's own time's Zeitgeist, pretty much like Babylon and the Hebrew people were in Nabucco, nobody really cares about the raciality of the people singing the roles. The difference was that the librettist and the design team were aided by an egyptologist.

It was the use of blackface which (justly) was deemed repugnant. If a person or persons of African descent is or are avaialable to sing the roles, glory to them, but that's not a requirement.

Likewise, nobody ever said anything about Akhnaten, Thaïs or Zauberflöte needing to be cast with people actually born in Egypt. (Yes, those operas also take place in Egypt, although the racial pool in Egypt, over the centuries, is quite fluid--and Zauberflöte is Egypt only in name.)