Fourteen days before the actual premiere, the client asked me to return with a different concept. I thought and helped, got two assistants and so together at the breakfast table a scenic arrangement for an empty stage with a temple panorama was created. One of the assistants liked it so much that he gave radio and television interviews in his home country and declared himself the director who saved the day. The orchestra came from Ukraine, so did the choir, so did the conductor. The double basses arrived right before the dress rehearsal, but the harps missed the way from Alexandria to Luxor. The best came at the end: the involuntary conversion of my fee into a one-week Nile cruise. Somehow it was still nice, had I left Aida in Luxor, my life would have been much poorer. Oh, there was the story of Torge, Sebastian, Wolfgang and me in Cairo …