Verdi's Aida: There's No Place Like Home
b"They say you can\\u2019t go home again, and Giuseppe Verdi\\u2019s Aida knows it all too well. Captured from her homeland of Ethiopia and enslaved in Egypt, she falls in love with an Egyptian warrior. Aida is torn between her love for this man and her love for her home and, because it\\u2019s opera, she ultimately chooses the tenor.\\nIn \\u201cO Patria Mia,\\u201d Aida stands on the banks of the Nile and says goodbye to Ethiopia. In this episode, host Rhiannon Giddens and her guests explore what home means, and what it means to leave it behind.\\nThe Guests\\nSoprano Latonia Moore has sung the role of Aida more than a hundred times. She made her Met debut in the role with a day and a half\\u2019s notice, and it launched her international career. As a Black soprano, she feels like she has joined the club of great singers who have taken on the role.\\nNaomi Andr\\xe9 is a professor of Afro-American and African Studies and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan. She wrote her dissertation on Verdi\\u2019s operas and was blown away the first time she saw Aida at the Met. She thinks it\\u2019s amazing that a story about ancient Egypt still resonates today, and she still finds something new in the work every time she sees it.\\nPoet and visual artist Mahtem Shiferraw is from Ethiopia and Eritrea, but now lives in Los Angeles. Coming to the U.S. as an adult, she had to completely rebuild her sense of identity and belonging, and her understanding of home. Growing up in Ethiopia, she went to an Italian school and acted in a non-opera production of Aida."