The Toledo Opera is performing Aida this month and doing outreach beforehand

I mentioned earlier this morning we'd be speaking with the folks from the Toledo Opera. You want to follow along? ToledoOpera.org. ToledoOpera.org. It's just that easy.

And I'm assuming they're on Facebook. Rachel will know that for sure. Rachel Cameron, Director of Marketing. And Lee, is it Lee or Leah? Leah.

Leah Whitaker is the Director of Development. You guys are on Facebook and Instagram and all that stuff, aren't you? We're everywhere. Do you do anything on YouTube at all? Any of the little performances like? We do. I'm looking forward to revitalizing our YouTube page soon.

I think that would be cool because it would be a good way to introduce folks to opera other than using Bugs Bunny as you have done in the past. That would be a nice way to do it. It can't be the classic, though. No, that's true.

You can't. And I mentioned last week on Facebook, I said we're going to be talking about the Toledo Opera. Most of you are familiar with the Bugs Bunny's version. This is different.

Did Bugs ever do Aida? No. I don't think so. I think he did Mozart and I think he did Wagner, but I'll have to rewatch it. All right.

Aida is the latest performance. It's coming up this weekend, right? Next weekend. Next weekend. This weekend is the Homelands.

Correct. All right. Aida Homelands. So what exactly is that taking place over at Toll House over on Summit, right? Yeah, it's...

Hi, everybody. You don't have to say hi to everybody. They know you're here. I'm nervous.

So, Homelands is one of our companion events. So, we plan events around each of our operas based on themes or stories from the production just to expand everyone's experience and maybe some education that goes into understanding the performance. This is based on, it's a celebration of Ethiopian culture and Aida's heritage. Aida was an Ethiopian princess sold into slavery in Egypt.

So we're paying tribute to Aida's heritage. We're bringing in a restaurant from Detroit to Toll House, The Taste of Ethiopia. They're going to do a full Ethiopian buffet spread. I know, I'm so excited.

So what, do you know any of the dishes? I mean, what makes Ethiopian food? cuisine different than well what we'd be used. To famously Ethiopian cuisine is served it's a seated cuisine okay and you have this bread called injera bread and it's like this spongy sort of sourdough brown bread it's almost like a pita okay and you use it as the spoon so you it's you scoop up the food. And so you're using your fingers oh yeah it's a it's and it's. A lot of like curry dishes similar to Indian but not the same spices a lot of vegetables they have Lamb and beef stews and lentils.

So it would be all stuff that's indigenous to Ethiopia. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, that sounds pretty decent.

So you've got a whole meal, music. Oh, yeah. Got a DJ coming in? No, we actually have. Not DJ Ethiopia? No, we have something better.

We have an Asmari musician. It's basically like an Ethiopian minstrel. So he's a single guitar player on a traditional Ethiopian instrument He's based out of D.C., but he knows the owners of the restaurant, so they're. Bringing him in.

Okay. So we'll be treated to traditional Osmari music at the end of the evening. We also have a musicology lecture. So Dr.

Ryan Ebert from Bowling Green State University will be with us, and he's going to give Our audience, you know, sort of the full understanding of the opera, Verdi's and from Verdi's perspective, why he wrote it, the composition, plus the history and the background. So that will be a lecture over dinner. And then we'll end the evening with the Asmari musician. And we have a special guest appearance, Mariam Batistelli.

She's an Italian Ethiopian opera singer. Oh, wow. Yeah, she was born in Ethiopia and her parents gave her up. for adoption to an Italian missionary family.

Is that where she got the last name from? Mm-hmm. Baristelli? Yep. So she grew up in Italy, and she's an opera singer. And she's said most recently she's come to the area to perform.

With the University of Toledo. She's singing the national anthem and some of our Italian outreach that we've been doing with the football game. So she's been involved with that. Pursuit Magazine is her sort of agent talent.

representation in the area and she's excited to join um our dinner and talk about her story and she is going to perform a song. So is this for somebody who doesn't know anything about opera all right would this be like an immersive experience for them because i i have no other than what i just read a little while ago about aida uh being an ethiopian princess and captured and enslaved in egypt I had no idea. All I knew was it was an Italian opera. So is this a good introduction for somebody who doesn't know anything about it at all? It is that and also for people.

So it will be great for beginners because you can hear from Dr. Ryan Ebert the story of Ethiopia. So if you go to the opera weekend later, you'll know what is happening on stage and you'll get more of a full picture of the history and the period of the writing. But for even, you know, longtime opera lovers or people who are familiar with the opera to have a cultural experience like that, it really adds a human element.

Because you haven't done this before, right? Nothing like that's probably like, you know, with the food and the different type of music. It's a really culturally immersive experience. You can get into the human stories behind these cultures and the kinds of people and having an actual Ethiopian Italian opera singer with us is an elegant feature. Now, have they, Rachel, have they done this? Did you do AIDA before, like a few years ago or anything? Oh, for sure.

We did AIDA about 13 years ago. That's the most recent production. And did they do any of this kind of outreach back then or is this kind of new thinking? That was before my time, but this is new thinking. This is the brainchild.

Are you going to blame this on Leah? No. I'll take it. This is the brainchild of our audience development committee who was behind the event Top Shelf for Elixir of Love last year. That was our Top Chef style cocktail competition event.

So we're really working to try to bring opera into the community, really enhance the community's experience of Aida in creative ways. Another way that this really gets to the crux of Aida is the whole conflict of the opera is her having to choose between love and her allegiance to her homeland. She's in love with the captain of the Egyptian guard, but she's an Ethiopian princess. So she has to kind of decide whether she values loyalty to her country or loyalty to the man she loves.

And then he has the choice later on to be with Aida but run away to Ethiopia, which is enemy territory, or stay in Egypt and marry the Egyptian princess and have maybe a slightly easier life. Wow. Sounds like stories of the NBA wives over on YouTube. Over on TV.

It's a really modern story. So it's in Italian, but you guys don't do captions. You do captions, right? In English. So anybody going, you know, because I'm used to watching stuff on TV, even with captions anymore, because the miking and so many movies and TV shows.

I can't hear without my captions. It is. It's just horrible. And so you have captions in English for this.

But you were talking about outreach. You do an awful lot of outreach with just the kids, with school groups and stuff. When you do something like this with AIDA, do you specifically go out and promote AIDA to the kids or just opera in general? We do a program called Student Night at the Opera, which has been around about as long as Toledo Opera has been around, which is almost 70 years at this point. Wow.

And we invite student groups, educators, homeschools, youth groups to put together a group of students for a field trip and come to the final dress rehearsal of Toledo Opera's performances. They get an audience guide beforehand if they want to learn more before or after the opera. And we see kids from all over Hancock County, Lucas County, Toledo Public. We see a lot of kids from a lot of different backgrounds.

And it was so funny. A few years ago, we had Jaden Jefferson doing like a red carpet kind of experience with the kids. And he was there saying, oh, is this your first time at the opera? And all these kids are like, no, I come every year. And he just had to pivot and go, oh, these aren't first-time opera goers.

That is a little odd. Now, the special Aida Homelands is this coming Sunday. It starts at 6 o'clock. over at the Toll House over on Summit.

Tickets are $ 75. You can get them right now by going to ToledoOpera.org. There's a link right there on the page. When you go to the top of the page, go to Beyond the Stage, scroll down to Community Events.

You'll find it right there, and then the link right there is for tickets. Now, AIDA itself, what are the performance dates for that? October 16th at 7.30 p.m. and October 18th at 2 p.m. Okay.

And your tickets are online also for that. Absolutely. You do it at the Valentine, right? Correct. That's our home.

How many seats does that? 901. That's a home? It always seems so much bigger when I'm there. I know, but it's such a great space for opera. Is it a good space? I've never been to the opera, so is it a good space? We're going to drag him.

I'm not an opera guy. You should come to AIDA. Honestly, it's... I should do whatever I want.

to do, Leah. Okay. And do you want to come see Aida? No. Do you want to eat Ethiopian food with us? It is delicious.

Now, the Ethiopian food, that might be a good idea. Yeah, it's delicious. It's very good. Is it very spicy? No.

Okay, because I'm not a good spicy guy. No, and a lot of people, you know, these restaurant owners, you know, they'll spice it. They know. They know we're mild eaters.

They know who we are. They know. They're used to us. See, now what's the next show that you have? What's the next opera? We're doing HMS Pinafore, which is an operetta.

It's in English. See, now that one I know. Well, you should come to that one. I've never seen it, but that one I know.

Do you have plans to do outreach for that also? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's tons of stuff in the works. We'll do, you know, between one and three programs for sure, get into the spirit of opera. We do for pretty much every production that we do.

So we'll for sure have that, and we'll put together some fun things that are unique to H.M. Spinafore. Yeah, we're thinking about going to the Fort Meigs and doing kind of like Oh, that'd be sweet. Yeah, understanding what life on a ship in the 19th century would be about.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that'd be kind of cool. I know.

Talk like a pirate day. That'd be awesome. For the Toledo Opera. That'd be great.

All right. Sunday, October 11th, Aida Homeland, 6 o'clock at the Toll House. Over on Summit, tickets are on sale right now. They're $ 75.

You get traditional Esmari music. You get an Ethiopian buffet right out of a Detroit restaurant. What's the name of the place? Taste of Ethiopia. Taste of Ethiopia.

And Dr. Ryan Ebright will be talking about the music and the culture of the opera. And special guest soprano Miriam Battistelli, who was born in Ethiopia. Is she going to perform tonight? One song, yeah.

One song. Really? One of my favorites? Yeah, I don't know what she's performing, actually. Free Bird? Yeah, sure. Bring your lighters.

Kill the Wabbit. Kill the Wabbit. Please have her do Kill the Wabbit. I'll pay $ 75 to see her do Kill the Wabbit.

And then Aida, the following weekend, for a couple of performances, and you get all of this information at ToledoOpera.com. ToledoOpera.org. ToledoOpera.org. All right.

Hey, guys. Thanks a lot. I appreciate you coming in. Was that long enough for you, Leah? That was just the right amount of time.

Just the right amount of time. Okay. Thank you very much.

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