Un’Aida All’Opra Bastille for Shirin Neshat – Mondo – Arte.it

World – Neshat becomes the director of the new production of Aida By Giuseppe Verdi all’Bastille Opera For the 2025-26 season, planned from September 24 to November 4, 2025. It is a return to the direction of the work for the Iranian artist, already internationally known for his work between photography, video installations and cinema, with which he is confronted with themes such as power, religion, genre and practice of decades, with a strong political and poetry.

Neshat, born in Iran in 1957 and living in New York, was trained in the United States and has developed a career that combines different languages, always with a strong visual system. It is known for jobs as Women of Allah” Turbulent one Tranceand receive important prices such as the Silver lion In Venice with the film Women without menAnd the Golden Lion on the Venice Biennale for his entire work. Directed three feature films, including Looking for Oum Kulthum one Land of dreamsand has exhibited in the large museums in the world.

The approach of the music theater is not entirely new for her. Has already signed a version of Aida Salzburg Festival In 2017 (at the time with the guidance of the orchestra by Riccardo Muti), then resumed in 2022. However, production on stage in the Opéra de Paris represents his real debut with the direction of the work in France, with a system specially designed for the Stadium of the Opéra Bastille.

In the official video released by the same institution, Neshat says: “Aida is a work whose modernity today resonates with violence. He speaks of war, religion, of intolerance, but also love and sacrifice. He is deeply up -to -date”. In an important passage of the same interview, he explains that “it’s not only about setting an Eastern drama for me, but also to make a language that combines image, music and feeling in a total way. It is very close to my way of working”.

The visual system of the staging promises to be essential But powerful: a mobile picturesque space, built on projective surfaces and plastic lights, in continuity with the video of the artist. The creative team includes Michele Mariotti and Dmitry Matvienko at The Musical Direction, Christian Schmidt on site, Felice Ross at The Lights and Tatyana from Walsum to the costumes.

The feeling of directing intervention It seems to want to overcome the clichés of Orientalists Those Aidas Putten have often characterized and move the center of gravity to the conflict between ideology and individual freedom. According to the artist: “My job is not to give answers, but to ask questions, let the viewer think”. A position that is consistent with his poetics, more interested in stimulating the thought than to impose a position.

The presence of a women’s director, Iranian and visual artist, who controls one of the most iconic titles of the Verdic Repertoire, therefore gets a profound cultural meaning. It is the sign of a work that not only continues to live because of his music, but also for the opportunity to renew itself through new visions, new sensitivity, new lectures.