During the 1919 Revolution, Egyptian nationalists overthrew their British occupants and established independence in 1922. Among these revolutionaries, Cairo’s performers began to use their voices and new musical styles to express their political ambitions. Mūnira al-Mahdiyya (1885–1965) was one such notable star who worked with her musical troupe to reconfigure Jules Massenet’s work Cléopâtre (1914) into the first Arabic opera, Cleopatra and Marc Antony. The new adaptation featured underlying anti-colonialist politics present since the 1919 Revolution. Cleopatra, performed by Al-Mahdiyya, was the symbol of a patriotic Egyptian queen facing the threat of European colonialism. The young, rising star Muhammad Abdel Wahab performed as Marc Antony, who represented the encroachment of the West. Remarkably, when the work premiered on January 20, 1927 in Cairo, the audience did not enjoy the opera. In subsequent nights, Al-Mahdiyya tried to save the show by firing Abdel Wahab and dressing in male costume to portray Marc Antony herself. After three performances, the opera closed, leading to the end of Al-Mahdiyya’s career. In this presentation, I use the failed Arabic opera Cleopatra and Marc Antony as a case study to analyze the queer persona of Al-Mahdiyya and the fledgling Kingdom of Egypt’s anti-colonial nationalist politics. Drawing upon scholarship on Arabic theatre and politics (Khuri-Makdisi 2010; Cormack 2021) and feminist queer studies in the Middle East (Massad 2007; Georgis 2013; Shomali 2023), I situate Cleopatra and Marc Antony within the broader narrative of the 1919 Revolution and women’s awakening movement. I examine the opera’s use of Western and Arabic musical styles to argue that Al-Mahdiyya brough both contemporary anti-colonial nationalist politics and gender performance to an unpopular opera. As Jack Halberstam (2011) writes, “gender failure often means being relieved of the pressure to measure up to patriarchal ideals, not succeeding at womanhood can offer unexpected pleasures.” In her performances of both Cleopatra and Marc Antony, Al-Mahdiyya represents her failure at portraying the ideal Egyptian woman and the threat of Western modernity. Cleopatra and Marc Antony provides an alternative queer narrative to anti-colonial nationalism and performance in early twentieth century Egypt.