Talk:Aida

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Disney etc. 2 Language 3 Reference to Musical 4 Film 5 celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal 6 Diacritics 7 Authentic Egyptian instruments 8 Opera Pacific photo 9 Separate articles on each of the characters in the opera 10 Spelling

[edit] Disney etc.

At one time in history, Disney planned on having a movie called "Aida" based on this, but production was stopped in 1999?? 66.245.12.170 22:58, 25 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Language

Maybe I'm just missing it, but the article doesn't seem to say what language the text of the opera was originally performed in.

[edit] Reference to Musical

I think that what 66.245.12.170 may be referring to is the Disney musical stage production, which I feel should be referenced and linked. Zephyrprince 04:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Film

I've seen the film adaptation of this a couple times now on Canadian TV, but can't see any mention of this on English Wikipedia. The 'Svenska' (swedish??) version does have it though, here starring Margareta_Ridderstedt. The IMDB page is here. Perhaps someone can do a translation of the sv page into English? For what it's worth, it was an amazingly shot movie, albeit with so much nudity that I'd be shocked if it ever made it to American TV. --Kickstart70·Talk 20:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

A request for translation has been made on the appropriate Wikipedia page (Wikipedia:Translation into English#Swedish-to-English) --Kickstart70·Talk 19:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal

Contrary to popular belief, the opera was not written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, nor that of the Khedivial Opera House.

anyone can verify this statement???
it seems to be untrue, according to many other sources.

--Hkchan123 13:03, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I inserted the above "Contrary ...." sentence into the article, and I also inserted under "References" near the bottom of the page that this info can be found in Budden's book. The composition process is very fully dealt with and documented there. I suggest you have a look at it. --GuillaumeTell 18:00, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Diacritics

I propose to again remove the umlauts from the word Aïda in this article. I did this on 3 May and it was reverted by User:Mr Snrub without explanation (I have now put a note on his/her Talk page).

The article is called Aida, the character is called Aida and the title of the opera is Aida, in both Italian and English. The articles in such English-language reference works as The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, the Penguin/Viking Guide, the Oxford Dictionary of Opera and Kobbé all use Aida and not Aïda. I know that the umlaut is necessary in French and possibly other languages so that people don't pronounce the "Ai" as in words like "aide", but this is the English-language Wikipedia, not the French one. I plan also to remove the grave accent from "Radamès" for exactly the same reason. --GuillaumeTell 11:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

GuillaumeTell is absolutely right on this. It is Aida not Aïda. - Kleinzach 14:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Either way is proper in this instance, there are many English-language treatments that include the diacritical marks; A Treasury of Grand Opera (one of the listed references) is just one of these. I also saw this performed recently in the United States and the characters were listed as Aïda and Radamès, not Aida and Radames. Inasmuch as Verdi wrote them this way originally, no harm is done in presenting the names in a like manner here. Mdhennessey 19:13, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

The Opera Project basic reference is New Grove Dictionary of Opera. This is the most authoritative volume on opera in the English language. It gives Aida without the dieresis. Not only that but it gives the 18 main references (on page 952) to this opera - all without the dieresis! (Incidentally I have never heard of A Treasury of Grand Opera.)

I'd be interested to know from Mdhennessey when and where Verdi used the name Aïda. Where exactly is this recorded? If everybody has got the spelling wrong up to now then we should all know about it! - Kleinzach 13:35, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I checked several sources in English, including the authoritative books by Julian Budden and Mary Jane Matz. None of them use the dieresis. I agree with Guillaume Tell and Kleinzach that it should be removed. Buondelmonte

I have removed the accents in line with Grove and majority opinion here. It's worth noting that the Italian page of Wikipedia uses Aida. As far as I know only the French page has Aïda. I trust that is satisfactory and ends this controversy. Regards to all. - Kleinzach 10:11, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

It's also worth mentioning that there is a redirect from Aïda, and that only ten other articles point to the redirect page, whereas there are (by my count) over 130 that point directly to Aida. --GuillaumeTell 16:51, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Counting which ones go directly here and which through the redirect tells us almost nothing. There are many editors who go around changing the links to the current article name. Furthermore, the variant spelling belongs in the article according to naming conventions rules. Mention it in the intro, then use he other. Gene Nygaard 20:09, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Authentic Egyptian instruments

I read somewhere that Verdi wanted to use authentic period Egyptian instruments but when he saw what they were like he realized they were about the equivalent of a child's tin horn and wouldn't give the right kind of sound for a big production like this. I can't remember where I read it and I'd need verification before adding it to the article. --Bluejay Young 00:56, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opera Pacific photo

This has a large amount of black top and bottom. i wonder if the person who uploaded it could crop it? - Kleinzach 01:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Separate articles on each of the characters in the opera

I see that someone has made separate articles on each of the characters in the opera. This has occasionally happened in the past and it has been deplored by the Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera as an unnecessary and confusing form of proliferation of material which should be made easily accessible in the main opera article.

Accordingly I will be reverting the edit and recommending deletion of the pages that deal with non-historical figures. Please feel free to discuss this issue below. Regards to all - Kleinzach 15:47, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling

Shouldn't "Aida" have an umlaut on the "i", creating "Aïda" ? Cheesypot 21:02, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

It's actually a diæresis, but you're right, it should be Aïda.Cameron Nedland 23:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

This has been fully dealt with above under the heading "Diacritics". The position is that this is an Italian opera, and the title of that opera in Italian is Aida. In Italian, the two initial vowels ("a" and "i") are pronounced individually - approximately "ah-ee", and there's no need for the diæresis. Putting one there would be the equivalent of putting an acute accent onto the e in Il trovatore. --GuillaumeTell 01:13, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad.Cameron Nedland 04:10, 20 March 2007 (UTC)