Egyptian Art and Music

Your art students at New Richmond Middle School, have been watching videos about opera? Yes, it’s true. November’s Evening for Educators will feature a vocalist from the Cincinnati Opera, so I wrote a lesson to connect music and art.

After looking at Egyptian art from the collection, including Tomb Relief: Female Attendants Clapping Hands, students learned that music and dance played an important part in ancient Egyptian life.  Vocal and instrumental music were performed at religious and public ceremonies.

Verdi’s Egyptian themed opera “Aida” will be presented during the Cincinnati Opera’s 2020 season. My students learned about the love triangle between Radames, the Egyptian general, Amneris, the Egytptian king’s daughter and Aida, the Ethiopian princess and slave to Amneris. They were assigned the task of designing a promotional poster to communicate the theme of the opera. Some students created hand-drawn posters while others used an on-line editor to alter images from the Egyptian collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum. (Of course, they credited the use of these images on their posters.)

It is always exciting to share art by my students at Evening for Educators!