Aida I

To access the full production program, click the PDF link above.

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09/29/1972, live broadcast, KKHI.   Intermission interview: #1  Remarks, interview Ken Ruta (guest); #2 interview Ballet, Bill Agee and Cynthia Gregory (guests). 

Corps de Ballet

Dancers from the Little Swahili Afro-modern Dance Group

Auxiliary chorus in Triumphal Scene rehearsed by CHARLENE ARCHIBEQUE

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Something that happened at a past performance of Aida has recently (in 2006) started acquiring a life different from the way things happened, so here is the way it was described by the San Francisco Chronicle on October 16, 1972:

Headline:
A STRANGE THING HAPPENED AT AIDA

Part of the text:

Shirley Verrett, golden-voiced American mezzo, who was finally making her San Francisco Opera debut as Amneris in an Aida repeat on Saturday night, was nearly upstaged by several radical supers.

Just as the curtain rang up after Act II to show off the entire Triumph Scene, three marchers came running down to stage front, unfurling a banner “Dykes and Fags Support the 7 Points.”

Bruce Yarnell, who was six foot five and as visually threatening as King Kong in his Amonasro get-up, ripped off the banner and threw it in the wings.

The irony of this end-the-war display is that seldom has the Opera House had a more straight audience than on [that] Saturday.