Verdi comes to Masada

by Dan Slobodkin

Some 40,000 tourists and opera aficionados gathered at the foot of Masada for two unique performances – a rendition of Nabucco, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Jewish” opera, and a concert by world-renowned diva Jessye Norman presented by the Israeli Opera.

Spectacular lighting and pyrotechnics, a choir of more than 120 singers and a similar number of actors, and horses and camels on a huge stage made for a memorable performance of Nabucco.

The costumes were ornate, but the scenery was bare until the last act, when a blazing arch appeared, followed by a huge burning menorah.

At the end of the performance conductor Daniel Oren stopped the show, repeating the chorus three times to the request of the crowd. For the final Va Pensiero the audience joined the Hebrew slaves chorus.

“It was a very good Va Pensiero,” remarked one audience member. “Very soft, gentle and humble. One could feel the yearning for Zion in it.”

Nabucco is a tale based on King Nebuchadnezzar’s capture and sacking of Jerusalem and his exiling of the Jews to Babylon.

Israeli maestro Daniel Oren conducts Nabucco at the foot of Masada. Next year: Aida.

Events have been held at Masada for years, but staging an opera in the middle of the desert was a daunting project that took three years to plan and cost 20 million shekels.

“We know how to mount an opera in an opera house as it is something we have been doing for 25 years, but it is not easy to build an opera city in the middle of the desert,” the Israel Opera’s general director Hanna Munitz told Reuters.

But the event proved a big boost to Israeli tourism, drawing 4,000 foreign visitors. Another Verdi opera, Aida, a love story about an Ethiopian princess who is captured and brought into slavery in Egypt by Radames, is planned for the venue in June 2011, featuring world-class singers Hi He, Pierro Guiliacci and Paata Burchuladze.

Organizers are hoping Masada becomes a permanent fixture on the world opera scene.

“The Masada Opera Weekend is a truly unique musical spectacle that will continue to draw music fans from the around the world to experience world-class opera at the footsteps of Masada,” said tourism commissioner Arie Sommer. “And we are excited by next year’s performances of Aida to carry on a special tradition of opera around the beautiful Dead Sea region.”

Masada, the 2,040-year-old palace-fortress built by Herod the Great as a refuge for Jewish rebels in the Dead Sea region, is a UNESCO World Heritage site and Israel’s third-most visited tourist attraction, welcoming approximately 605,000 visitors per year.