The lands of Anatolia, where we live today, have been home to some of the most powerful civilisations in human history; they have been the stage for a great cultural and political accumulation stretching from the Hittites to the Phrygians, from the Urartians to the Ionian cities. One of these rich historical layers is the Kingdom of Lydia, which ruled in Western Anatolia and changed the destiny of its era with its economic power.
In the 6th century BC, particularly between 549–546 BC, Sardis, the capital of Lydia, known today as the Salihli district of Manisa, experienced one of its most brilliant periods. It was not only an administrative centre but also a city renowned for its wealth and cultural vitality, located at the crossroads of trade routes. The eastern border of the kingdom extended to the Kızılırmak River, one of the important natural and political borders of the period.
Composed by Güldiyar Tanrıdağlı with a libretto by İskender Pala, Edusa comes to life in this geography, which has been a crossroads of civilisations throughout history, woven with the wealth, political tensions and human stories of Lydia. The events that unfold throughout the work are portrayed not only as a reflection of a single era but as an echo of Anatolia's millennia-old memory brought to the stage.
With Edusa, İskender Pala emphasises that the true power of a society lies not in the land it possesses or the material wealth it has accumulated, but in the culture it has passed down from generation to generation. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, gold, money, and power...