| Kamal Abdel-Aziz’s documentary The Burning of the Cairo Opera, 1971 resurrects a 40-year-old mystery By Sherif Awad |
| The 1971 fire at the Royal Cairo Opera House did more than just destroy a beautiful building in downtown Cairo’s Attaba district. Some would argue it ended a golden era of culture. At best, the blaze sparked accusations of official neglect and incompetence, while the worst criticism hinted at conspiracies lurking in the smoldering ashes.In his first foray as a film director, Kamal Abdel-Aziz looks at the fire that shocked the nation, releasing his documentary The Burning of the Cairo Opera, 1971 40 years after the fateful event. A veteran director of photography, Abdel-Aziz has worked since the 1990s on mainstream films with acclaimed local filmmakers such as Mohamed Khan, Dawood Abdel-Sayed, Aly Abdel-Khaled and Inas El-Degheidy. Abdel-Aziz’s documentary, produced by his company Cadrage, premiered in early January with a special screening at the Supreme Council of Culture at the ‘new’ Cairo Opera House in Gezirah. The premiere drew filmmakers, critics, aficionados and intellectuals. It took Abdel-Aziz three years to research, shoot and edit the 40-minute documentary, which drew inspiration from multiple sources. For one, the director grew up in the Al-Mosky neighborhood, and his balcony overlooked Opera Square. As an adult, Abdel-Aziz has spent the past 25 years collecting negatives and still photographs of nineteenth and twentieth-century Cairo, a hobby that has become a passion. “I went on that quest after noticing that books and visual documents about modern Egypt are rarely to be found here and elsewhere,” Abdel-Aziz explains. “The common interest basically focuses on Pharaonic Egypt.” He has gathered thousands of pictures from different sources, sometimes from secondhand dealers unaware of various photographs’ values. In the process, Abdel-Aziz found himself the owner of photographs, documents and souvenir booklets about performances at the Royal Opera House. Also known as the Khedivial Opera House — in honor of then-ruler Khedive Ismail who commissioned it — the building opened in 1869 as part of the celebrations for the opening of the Suez Canal. In 1871, Giuseppe Verdi premiered his opera Aida at the Royal Cairo Opera House. Abdel-Aziz says he is trying to make a statement with his directing debut. “My film is about losing many pieces of our historical heritage. Most of the negatives I possess were [taken by] international photographers commissioned by George Eastman, founder of Kodak, to visually document all the social and cultural aspects of Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” The director explains that many of those precious negatives were melted by people trying to extract the silver from the silver nitrate used in photography film. “A ton of negatives can generate a quarter kilo of silver! Can anyone believe it?” Abdel-Aziz says. “Can anyone believe that also not a single acoustic record of the hundreds of shows that were performed in the Old Opera still exists?” Even without audio documentation available, Abdel-Aziz made a conscious decision not to use any kind of narrative voice-over to tell the story of the rise and fall of the old Opera House. Instead, he tracked down dancers, singers, musicians and other people who were performing at the Opera House during its final years: “I let them tell their testimonies in their own words. This sad incident was carved in their minds and in the hearts of all Egyptians until now. But some people forgot it and the young generation confuse it with the burning of Cairo that took place in January 1952, six months before the revolution.” In all, 13 interviewees share their recollections and opinions about the tragic blaze. And some of the revelations and recollections were quite astonishing. Dr. Magda Saleh, a former prima ballerina, revealed that the firefighters did not immediately move to stop the fire but they waited for an official order from the government. “But the sad irony is that Old Opera was right next to the fire station,” Saleh says in the documentary. “Moreover, the architectural design included an emergency room next to the stage, with two fire officers in attendance on morning and night shifts.” Musician Abdel-Hamid Gad remembered that the two hoses used by the firefighters had insufficient water pressure to suppress the fires in due time. Dr. Ratiba Al-Hifni, a former opera singer, expressed her surprise at how the fire seemed to break out in the four corners of the Old Opera building at the same time. It took 10 hours for the Royal Cairo Opera House, made mostly of wood, to burn completely to the ground. In addition to still photos of nearly a century’s worth of performances on the Opera House stage, Abdel-Aziz also managed to find the most valuable documentation of the actual fire: An 8mm film shot by an amateur photographer who happened to be passing by the blaze. The director purchased the film from the widow of the man who shot the film. It is the only moving footage that chronicles the burning of the Old Opera and the incompetence of the authorities in their attempts to save it. In the 8mm film, Opera Square was a scene of slapstick with soldiers and firefighters using hoses that shot water everywhere except toward the fires. They also tried to save a piano by throwing it from the second floor window. If the images of the fire are comical, the documentary ends on a poignant note. In the final scenes, opera singer Violette Magar and pianist Aldo Miniatto, now in their eighties, try to relive some of their performances, but they both fail due their old age. Abdel-Aziz’s camera caught their tears. It is a visual metaphor of how these symbols of a golden era are vanishing. In fact, the burning of the Opera House marked the end of an era in which music and art enlightened the nation. Today, the cultural monuments of our modern times are demolished for the sake of commercial malls — the Royal Opera House being a case in point. In the place of the stage that premiered Aida is a multistory concrete car garage. The great irony is that this garage is called Opera Garage and the square is still called Opera Square. “Only in Egypt could this happen,” says Abel-Aziz. “In France, the Bastille Prison was demolished and replaced by the current Opera Bastille.” Although The Burning of the Cairo Opera, 1971 is a good piece of investigative reporting, it does not offer satisfying answers to the mysteries behind this incident. Actually, it leaves the viewer puzzled and raises more questions than answers. For example, the Royal Cairo Opera House housed a huge musical library and a museum featuring Verdi’s original handwritten composition notes — these also ‘disappeared’ without a trace, along with many gold artifacts, the film asserts. It is yet another Egyptian X-File like many things nowadays. |
Be Social
Comments
Leave a Comment