The origins of opera houses in Egypt
Théâtre Zizinia, La Scala of Alexandria
The majority of academics and music history books identify the origins of the opera theatre in Egypt with the construction of the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo in 1869, but they actually go back at least a century before that to the late 1700s, during the period of the French occupation of Egypt. It was Napoleon, in fact, who initially introduced modern European theatre to the country.
Before this, the only forms of entertainment that were similar to theatrical performances were puppet shows, pantomimes and jesters, which took place in public places.¹
These performances, which were improvised acts that used masks in the style of the Italian commedia dell’arte, dealt with satirical themes that were mainly related to the social conditions of the less well-off classes. It was with the construction of the first theatre halls by the French that the public began to sit, for the first time, alongside the Egyptian, Greek and Italian Francophone aristocracy.
Before the construction of the Cairo Opera House, the only descriptions of European theatre performances in Egypt are those that were described by the writer Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi who, like many other Egyptians at the time, had studied in Paris in order to broaden his knowledge in a modern country such as France and had had the opportunity to frequent some of the most important French opera houses of the time.²
Tahtawi describes the theatre and the opera as the greatest entertainment he had ever witnessed, saying that “if there were not so many Satanic leanings in the French theatre, it would have to be considered an institution with highly beneficial virtues”.³
In 1834, the governor, Muhammad Ali Pasha, considered to be the founding father of modern Egypt, was so struck by Tahtawi’s account that he ordered him to start teaching the fundamentals of European theatre in schools.
The occupation of Egypt by Napoleon and, subsequently, the Western-inspired modernising policies pursued by Muhammad Ali Pasha both fostered a rapid spread of a “European culture of modern theatre” in Egypt: “it was the European theatre, performed in French or Italian, that was paramount and was given precedence by the authorities, not the nascent Arabic theatre”.⁴
From the 1840s, the amount of performances of European theatre increased significantly, “audiences [being] particularly fond of lighter works: operettas, comedies, farces and vaudevilles”.⁵
The first documented performance of an Italian lyric opera in Egypt was Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, which was staged in Alexandria in 1841. Ricci’s Chiara di Rosenberg, Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti and I Puritani di Scozia by Bellini followed in 1842.
Italian theatre had such a presence in the city that a set of regulations, written in Italian, was released by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and circulated by the local authorities.⁶
Pietro Avoscani, an architect from Livorno who took refuge in Alexandria after participating in Giuseppe Mazzini’s Giovine Italia (Young Italy) movement, made significant contributions to the promotion of Italian opera in Egypt. In fact, he oversaw, at his own expense, the production of three operas in 1841: Gemma di Vergy by Donizetti, Ernani by Verdi and Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia, which were put on at the palace at Gabari and were received enthusiastically by Muhammad Ali Pasha.⁷
In July 1856, Avoscani organised a big public celebration at the Palace at Gabari, where operas, dramas, ballets and gymnastics were staged over the course of three days.⁸
A year later, together with other Italians, he asked for permission to build a theatre in the Italian style and organised a contest for its design, which was won by the Florentine architect Mariano Falcini.
This project was never realised, but in 1862 Etienne Zizinia, the powerful Greek consul general for Belgium, commissioned Avoscani to design a theatre to be built near the Rosetta Gate in Alexandria. Avoscani’s building was very similar to the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
In contrast with the Scala’s Neoclassical style he used terracotta decorations, typical of Milanese buildings of the Risorgimento period, perhaps to celebrate the accomplishment of his patriotic ideals after Italian Unity was proclaimed in 1861. Although the city contained other theaters, it was his Zizinia Theater that marked the line of the road to the Rosetta Gate as a main urban axis of the European quarter, along which consulates and villas came to be built a few years later.⁹
For a long period the Zizinia Theatre, inaugurated in 1863, was one of the most prestigious places in Alexandria, which at the time was not only one of the country’s most well-connected cities with the international (particularly Italian) social and economic scenes, but also itself a growing and thriving cultural centre.¹⁰
It is worth noting that the impresario of the Zizinia Theatre until the end of the 1870s was Giuseppe V.W. Malfigianni, a composer of Maltese origins who was also the first impresario of the Royal Opera House in Valletta (Malta), which was inaugurated on October 9, 1866.¹¹
With a capacity of 2,000, the theatre was operative until 1908, when it was demolished to make room for the construction of a new theatre, the Mohamed Aly Theatre, which was inaugurated in 1921. After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, the theatre was renamed as the Sayed Darwish Theatre, and is today more commonly known as the Alexandria Opera House.
In the meantime, Pietro Avoscani continued to have a significant impact on the development of the opera house in Egypt.
Under the Khedivate of Egypt of Isma’il Pasha, who ruled between 1863 and 1879, the work begun by Muhammad Ali Pasha to modernise the country continued, with a reform programme inspired by those of major European nations.
It was during his rule that the French completed the ambitious project of creating the Suez Canal, the artificial channel that allows direct navigation from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, via Egypt itself.
The Canal was inaugurated with a ceremony in Port Said on November 17, 1869, and was attended by Empress Eugenie of France. A celebratory march, the Egyptischer Marsch by Johann Strauss II, was commissioned specially for the occasion.
It was in fact during the celebrations of the opening of the Suez Canal that the Khedive of Egypt, who was impassioned by melodrama (he had studied at the École d’état-major in Paris), decided to build an 850-seat theatre in Cairo within a few months: the Khedivial Opera House (the future Cairo Opera House).
[1] P.C. Sadgrove, The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century 1799–1882 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996).
[2] Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi and Daniel L. Newman, An Imam in Paris: Account of a Stay in France by an Egyptian Cleric (1826–1831) (London: Saqi Books, 2011).
[3] Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi and Daniel L. Newman, An Imam in Paris: Account of a Stay in France by an Egyptian Cleric (1826–1831) (London: Saqi Books, 2011), 34–37.
[4] P.C. Sadgrove, The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century 1799–1882 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996), 2.
[5] P.C. Sadgrove, The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century 1799–1882 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996), 3.
[6] P.C. Sadgrove, The Egyptian Theatre in the Nineteenth Century 1799–1882 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996), 37, 40. On the text of the “Regolamenti Teatrali”, see 169–170. On seasonal Italian theatrical journals in 19th century Alexandria, see 73–74.
[7] Cristina Pallini, “Italian Architects and Modern Egypt”, in Studies in Architecture, History and Culture — Papers by the 2003–2004 AKPIA@MIT Visiting Fellows (Cambridge, MA: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004).
[8] L’Illustration, “Les fêtes d’Alexandrie”, L’Illustration 70 (1856): 103–106.
[9] Cristina Pallini, “Italian Architects and Modern Egypt”, in Studies in Architecture, History and Culture — Papers by the 2003–2004 AKPIA@MIT Visiting Fellows (Cambridge, MA: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004).
[10] Ahmed B. Suleiman Mohamed, “Alexandria’s Social Environment Impact on Public Spaces”, Global Journal of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences 2, no. 6 (2014): 29–43.
[11] Nicholas D. Chircop, A Transient Colony in the Valley of the Nile: The History of the Maltese Colony in Egypt throughout the 19th and 20th Century (Self-published, 2015).
This work is an excerpt from the book “The Evolution of Opera Theatre in the Middle East and North Africa” by Paolo Petrocelli, published in 2019 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. © Paolo Petrocelli
