Opera in Arabic

The history of opera in the Arabic-speaking world is generally viewed to have started from the premiere of Verdi's Aida in Cairo at the Khedivial Opera House in 1871, though Verdi's opera was sung in Italian.

Ratiba El-Hefny sung the title role in Cairo in Lehár's The Merry Widow in Arabic in 1961. This was followed by Verdi's La traviata in Arabic in 1964 and Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice in 1970. This era ended with the 1971 fire at the Khedivial Opera House.

On March 6, 2008, at the 8th Al-Ain Classical Music Festival at Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates, Polish opera director Ryszard Peryt directed Egyptian musicologist Aly Sadek's translation of Mozart's Don Giovanni, as performed by soloists, the choir of the Université Antonine, Baabda, Lebanon, and the Warsaw Philharmonic's Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Zbigniew Graca. The project planned to present other Mozart opera in the Arabic language, e.g. The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute and record on the Opera in Arabic label.

The first opera in Arabic may be that of the Lebanese composer Wadih Sabra, whose opera The Two Kings to a libretto by Father Marun Ghusn, was premiered in Beirut in 1927 but has since been lost.

Egyptian composer Aziz El-Shawan's Antar (1948, based on the life of Antarah ibn Shaddad) and Anas el-Wugood (1970) are on historical themes as are his countrymen Sayed Awad's The Death of Cleopatra, based on the epic poem by Ahmed Shawqi, and Kamel El-Remali's opera Hassan El-Basri, based on the life of Hassan El-Basri.

...
Wikipedia