Verdi - Aida (Paris, 2021)

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Opéra national de Paris, 2021

Michele Mariotti, Lotte de Beer, Ksenia Dudnikova, Sondra Radvanovsky, Jonas Kaufmann, Roberta Mantegna, Ludovic Tézier, Soloman Howard, Dmitry Belosselskiy, Alessandro Liberatore

ARTE Concert - 18 February 2021

It would be a shame to ever get tired of Aida, as it is undoubtedly a supreme work of opera from a great composer reaching the pinnacle of his craft, but I could do without ever seeing another idealised ancient Egyptian setting and ceremonial procession. There's nothing inherently wrong with that it's just I like to see something that makes you think a little deeper about what the opera is about. And from the last few productions I've seen, the opera is surprisingly adaptable to draw out the work's themes, which are far as Verdi is concerned, is a large scale attack on war and religion and the impact of them on individual human lives.

There's a hint in the period and the museum setting of this Paris production that the director Lotte de Beer wants to draw out the issue of colonialism. The opera is updated here - thank goodness - to the Italian Risorgimento, a more meaningful period at least as far as Verdi was concerned. And there's no question that the underlying force of the work lies in such a context. Much as La Traviata gains its true strength from the sense of burning injustice towards women in society, Aida shows that there's a human reality and cost to war. It diminishes the power of the work if it is merely presented as a glamorous grand opera spectacle.

The Paris production opens with Radamès looking at a mummy-like Aida in a display case at a museum as he reflects on conflicted feelings of love for country and fighting for it in a war. The mummy Aida comes to life then as a guiding spirit - or something like that - in his life. Amneris then acts as the other side of this, his conflicted feelings of betrayal of his obligations to his own country. The other underlying themes and sentiments relating to war, religion and colonialism are similarly brought out in other exhibits from other cultures in glass cases. One of the cases contains a skull, the connotations of which are fairly obvious, even as Radamès as newly elected commander in arms anoints it with blood.

Whether you buy into this idea or not, the change of perspective - to say nothing of the beautiful set and costume design - at least serves to make this an attractive and fresh take on an opera whose themes are too often buried in convention and played purely for grand opera spectacle. The centrepiece victory march - often the most problematic for any director wishing to undercut the triumphalism of war - is presented not without some irony as a series of exhibition tableaux of classic paintings put on at the "museum". It references and recreates scenes of Napoleon, the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima, Delacroix's Liberty and other triumphal poses through the ages that could be said to glorify or idealise war.

It's a mark of how good the production is that it hits home effectively not just in the traditional big numbers and famous arias, but in the more human moments that are just as crucial such as the plight of the Ethiopian prisoners and Aida's recognition of her father. What also becomes evident - and Ksenia Dudnikova has much to contribute to this - is the other triumphant victory of Amneris over Aida in gaining the promise of marriage to Radamès. Verdi's ensemble writing for this is astonishing, gathering up all the conflicting desires and combining them with the inhuman treatment of prisoners of war to make this scene as forceful as any other in this work, the work of a complete master.

But why the puppets? This would have been a great production but for the dumb choice of using puppets for Aida and Amonasro. Life size puppets are not uncommon in opera productions, but they are rarely put to any meaningful use. In a Madama Butterfly, you could see some sense of purpose in Cio-Cio San being manipulated and treated like a doll, a plaything. Puppets have been used in Weber's Oberon as an impressive spectacle for a fairy-tale opera, but they can be superfluous to The Magic Flute. Other than to prevent singers 'blacking up' I can't for the life of me understand why Lotte de Beer went with the crude fossilised puppets for Aida. With three operators and Sandra Radvanovsky all on the stage for Aida, it's a terrible distraction. Add another two for Amomasro's half puppet and it over-complicates important direct scenes. Radvanovsky and Tézier don't seem to know whether they should be singing to each other or the puppets, and the camera isn't quite sure who to follow either. Perhaps worse, Jonas Kaufmann even has to endure the embarrassing situation of getting intimate with a puppet, and looks like he is being attacked by a gang.

As a human Aida, Sandra Radvanovsky is good. The high register occasionally pushes her out of comfort zone, thinning out to near inaudibility in some passages, but she brings character and depth of feeling to the work. It's a shame that she has to compete with a puppet and puppet handlers. The Uzbekistan mezzo-soprano Ksenia Dudnikova is just superb as Amneris. She handles the singing requirements more than capably, but just as importantly she captures the weak human side of Amneris as well as her regal imperiousness. Aida is an opera that is there for the taking by an Amneris of sufficient quality - her emotional and musical journey is a fascinating one - and I read somewhere that Verdi even considered calling the opera Amneris at one point. She may not yet be the ideal Amneris but Dudnikova makes her character human and as far as I'm concerned steals the show.

In another time that might have been the case for Jonas Kaufmann, but I have to say he is making less of an impression now with each new performance. Where once he was commanding, he now feels disengaged from the character and looks like he is going through the motions. The voice isn't quite as controlled and stable as it once was either, his diction lacks clarity and despite the loud delivery there's no real strength or volume there. I may be nit-picking and expecting too much because in the moments when he needs to be convincing, he is still very good. Amanasro is not a major role in this opera, but it counts and it's always a joy to hear a great Verdi baritone like Ludovic Tézier, who carries on regardless of the puppet distraction.

Some operas work better with the lack of an audience than others, but it may be something we have to get used to for a while yet. Broadcast live streaming from Paris, conducted by Michele Mariotti, this was as good a performance of Aida as any I've heard. The Paris Opera orchestra sound superb here, and despite the puppets and some weaknesses in the singing - the whole thing is redeemed to a large extent by the musical performance and Ksenia Dudnikova's Amneris - Lotte de Beer's production does succeed in allowing the quality of the opera and the purpose behind it to be brought out, allowing Aida to impress on it's own musical terms rather than as a mere spectacle.

Links: Opéra national de Paris, ARTE Concert

Verdi - Aida (Dublin, 2018)

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Irish National Opera, 2018

Fergus Sheil, Michael Barker-Caven, Monica Zanettin, Stefano La Colla, Imelda Drumm, Ivan Inverardi, Manfred Hemm, Graeme Danby, Rachel Goode, Conor Breen

Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin - 29 November 2018

Aida doesn't do subtle, but to be frank war doesn't do subtle either and that is essentially the theme and the challenge of presenting what is the peak of Verdi's late period operas. The trick is not to let the grand opera bombast and spectacle overwhelm the love story narrative, and to not let either distort the deeper meaning in the work. I'm not convinced that the Irish National Opera succeed entirely on either of those fronts, but they certainly are aware of the operas pitfalls and do their best to overcome them and in the process deliver an ambitious and powerful account of the work.

The biggest distraction to be contended with in Aida is often the representation of ancient Egypt with its pyramids and obelisks, robes and costumes giving it a remote aspect that removes it from any kind of reality. Michael Barker-Caven aims for a more abstract representation of what all that glamour and spectacle really means in terms of the wielding and exercise of power. Joe Vaněk's set and costume designs manage to retain quite a bit of the iconic imagery of ancient Gods and mysticism, giving it more of a masonic quality in this Irish National Opera production.

I'm not sure there's ever any acceptable rationale however for having mimes in an opera production, and we actually have three of them here adding to what is a complicated staging operating on a number of levels with lots of extra detail taking place on the sides and in projections. It does tend to take away from the traditional focus and narrative progression of the work, but I can live with that and so too apparently could the audience at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin who rose in rapturous response to the performance at the end.

The love story between Aida and Radamès might have been lost to some extent, but in a way that's the point. While these characters are trying to follow their hearts, war, race, duty and nationalism all create divisions and overwhelm any human considerations. Even Amneris is a victim, trapped by the social order that she lives in, part of a war machine that crushes any individual desires. Neither were the anti-war, anti-religious sentiments over-emphasised however, but rather just additional factors reminding you of how those with wealth and privilege are also trapped within the restrictive boundaries that they uphold.

Avoiding the bigger (heavier-handed) picture, the INO production instead focussed on little details that are more often overlooked. Far too many to take in or even comprehend as fitting into the overall narrative picture, but they contributed to the overall impact that it is necessary to achieve. It's about using war and nationalism as a weapon to control and win people over to the idea of blind obedience, making them nice little consumers, distracted by the lure of glamorous clothes, wealth and mindless entertainment. What is lost is also suggested in the more intimate details of Aida's longing for her homeland, for the destruction of nature (soft breezes, grassy hills, virgin forests) that unbridled capitalism and war bring.

So instead of the usual pomp and ceremony in Act III we had Chippendale-like dancers performing for the well-dressed women and pompom-waving cheerleaders for the brave troops returning after massacring the Ethiopian enemies. Everywhere TV cameras chose to show the images the media and the establishment want you to see, one that supports their own interests, ambitions and incursions, one that promotes it as being for the benefit of the people. This is an Aida that speaks of the world we know today without having to make the point in any blunt or heavy-handed manner.

Some of the multitude of ideas worked better than others, but it was most successful and had the most impact when it chimed with Verdi's music. When heard in this context, without it having to support kitsch spectacle and hackneyed costumes, when it supports rather the themes of bowing unquestioningly to the power and influence, Verdi's incredible music shows its true qualities. Fergus Sheil controlled its inherent power well, rising in force as the work progressed, working hand-in-hand with all the detail that was going on on the stage rather than aiming for the big sweep, allowing the score to assert its own undeniable force. Sinead Hayes ensured that the choral arrangements were just perfect (the song of the Priestesses, 'Possente Ftha' just mesmerising), and the overall result was impressive.

Even so, all these musical qualities would be to little avail if the strength of human love didn't arise out of it all as the important factor. In pure narrative terms it's all a bit melodramatic, but Barker-Caven ensured that the characterisation was strong enough to match the sentiments expressed in Verdi's musical writing for the voice. And, despite some worrying set-backs announced before the performance on the 29th November, that was very well catered for with Monica Zanettin and Stefano La Colla having to step in at very short notice for the two principals Orla Boylan and Gwyn Hughes Jones.

How they managed to fit a new Aida and Radamès into such a complicated stage production with elaborate choreography was simply incredible. Both Zanettin and La Colla took maybe five minutes to settle into the roles but after that it was a seamless transition, both rising to the vocal challenges and bringing the necessary warmth and character to the roles. Actually, it might have been more difficult to carry-off if the production didn't have Imelda Drumm in the role of Amneris. She was everything you want an Amneris to be, the driving force behind the human conflicts, but one whose predicament and loss also elicits a considerable degree of sympathy.

Links: Irish National Opera

Verdi - Aida (Stockholm, 2018)

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Royal Swedish Opera - Stockholm, 2018 

Pier Giorgio Morandi, Michael Cavanagh, Christina Nilsson, Ivan Defabiani, Katarina Dalayman, Lennart Forsén, Alessio Cacciamani, Johan Edholm, Jihan Shin, Jessica Forsell

OperaVision - April 2018

If there's one Verdi opera that needs to be continually reassessed and reconsidered in terms of whether it still has any real relevance or anything to say to a modern audience it's probably La Traviata, but Aida isn't far behind. Both works might have been fuelled by real anger against social institutions, but if they ever did have anything important to say it's easy for it to get lost in the star power and glamour that the operas' settings and subjects inevitably attract. La Traviata however can be immensely powerful and hard-hitting about society's treatment of women when it's allowed to be, and condemnation of the horrors of war in Aida need not necessarily be submerged under the bombast of Verdi's score and the pomp and ceremony of grand opera spectacle.

You do have to question the effectiveness of Verdi's treatment in Aida however, in how it seems to get carried away with its exotic setting and location, in the attention that Verdi pays towards Eastern-influenced melodies, grand religious ceremonies and ceremonial triumphal marches before royalty. With the melodramatic turns of love, family and duty all becoming intertwined, it threatens to overshadow the anti-war, anti-religious sentiments that are there, but there have been some notable attempts (and failures) to move away from the glamour and address the real issues at the heart of the work - if you consider that they were ever really there.

The short overture to Aida certainly reflects a more sombre note, and in Michael Cavanagh's production for the Royal Swedish Opera, that's immediately established as being associatedwith the more intimate story of the individuals whose lives have suffered because of the demands placed on them by the 'state'. We already see Aida and Radamès buried alive in the tomb that descends to show a figure we can presume in Amneris, lying face down in a pool of blood with a knife by her side. The note of melancholy that can also be found in Radamès ode to an impossible love for a slave girl of his nation's enemy ('Celeste Aida') is soon overwhelmed by cries of 'war and death' as the news of Amonasro's advance is brought by the High Priest, Ramfis.

It's in such contrasts however that Aida does effectively present the conflict between the individual's hope and dreams and the necessity of putting them aside for something as monstrous as war. Radamès's personal conflict is mirrored in the situation of Aida later in the opera when she is torn between her love for Radamès and her love for her father, Amanasro, the King of Ethiopia whose armies have been routed and taken captive by the Egyptian commander and his forces. There's also very much a case put of there being no real victors when it comes to war. "Today we are the victims of fate, tomorrow fate may strike you", Amonasro warns Radamès, and history has shown the truth of such turns of fate in the downfalls of the great. 

This aspect is borne out and elaborated upon quite successfully in the Stockholm production even if the focus is very much on the small personal drama. It's hard to criticise the production on those grounds, as this is indeed very much how it is played by Verdi. So yes, Aida has musical and dramatic flaws, or even if you don't consider them flaws - and it's perfectly valid to enjoy the opera for the music and singing for what it is - you still adjust the emphasis at your peril. Olivier Py's scattershot Paris production demonstrated the risks inherent in that whereas the chamber approach as seen more recently in the La Monnaie production, touched much more effectively on the true nature of the work in a way that prevented it from it appearing dated and out of touch with the times.

Magdalena Åberg's set and costume designs for the Royal Swedish Opera production are unimposing, but there is a balance struck between modern military uniforms with AK47 rifles and some nods to the Egyptian heritage of the work with its robes and ceremonies. The production does well to avoid the familiar imagery and processional choreography, presenting a more minimal stage with a gold wall in the background and blue lighting that nonetheless retains an air of a royal palace with notions of strict protocol and order. So there's a fresh modern outlook on the work at the same time as the necessary contrasts between the institutions of the state and the ordinary citizen are marked out well; contrasts that focus on the intimate love story at the heart of the work, one crushed by the weight of those powers that Verdi depicts so dramatically. 

The main issue that has to be dealt in a production of Aida is in how to present it's Triumphal March; whether to make it a glorious spectacle or undercut it with realism. Cavanagh's approach wisely takes a dim view of celebrating slaughter, so while the chorus and trumpets are proclaiming victory and the greatness of their King, we are shown scenes of the reality of the war that Radamès has waged against the Ethiopian tribes. And it is very much that of a large military force, bulked out in combat gear with every precision targeting technology at their disposal, bringing horror to the lives of ordinary citizens. It's very well staged - with curtains blocking off live vignette scenes rather than using projections - and it hammers home the horror of the contrast between the ideal of duty and the reality for Radamès. 

Musically, Pier Giorgio Morandi conducts an excellent performance that plays well to the contrasts of Verdi's melodies and the variety of sentiments within it without letting it get too sentimental. The singing performances, despite some initial reservations with timing and technique, are also quite good, and backed up with a superb chorus. You have to pity any young tenor who has to launch straight into an aria like 'Celeste Aida' with barely time to warm up, but Ivan Defabiani's Radamès really comes through spectacularly later with a performance that builds in character and confidence. Christina Nilsson as Aida also takes a short while to find her feet after 'Ritorna vincitor', but likewise gives a fine performance, the two of them making a convincing young couple whose love is challenged by the scorned Amneris. Katarina Dalayman shows the right kind of imperiousness tinged with regret, although her voice is lacking some of the necessary force. It's in this small scale drama that the bigger picture is reflected, bearing out the words spoken earlier that "Today we are the victims of fate, tomorrow fate may strike you".

Links: Royal Swedish Opera, OperaVision

Verdi - Aida (Salzburg, 2017)

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Salzburg Festival, 2017

Riccardo Muti, Shirin Neshat, Anna Netrebko, Francesco Meli, Ekaterina Semenchuk, Luca Salsi, Roberto Tagliavini, Dmitry Belosselskiy, Bror Magnus Tødenes, Benedetta Torre

ARTE Concert - 12 August 2017

It's hard to imagine that a production of Aida can miss its mark, or even worse, be boring, but it does seem to happen with increasing regularity. I'm sure it's a lot to do with the nature of the work itself, which much be fairly intimidating to approach, where there are exceptional demands placed on the singers and on the need to meet audience expectations for an opera spectacle of the highest order. There's merit in Riccardo Muti's belief that you don't have to go either the route of the full Zeffirelli or modern abstract but that you can find an in-between alternative, and the resulting 2017 Salzburg production certainly returns the focus on the musical qualities of the performance, but it has to be said that Shirin Neshat's incredibly static production misses the mark by a mile.

Although the director might have been an unknown quantity, expectations were nonetheless high for this Salzburg Festival Aida. The principal reason for that was of course for the opportunity to hear Anna Netrebko take on the famous role for the first time and as the consummate professional, it can't be denied she doesn't disappoint in the slightest. She might look and act more like an Egyptian Princess than an Ethiopian slave girl, but she's going to carry that aura in every role, no matter how good her acting performance. If you paid a fortune to see this production in Salzburg in person, you will certainly have got your money's worth. This is as good an Aida as you'll hear sung in your lifetime.

Netrebko's voice has matured into a fully rounded voice, secure in every register and impressive at the high end. Her assumption of the role - as always - is full of conviction. You can get lost in the presence of Netrebko singing a role, she just commands attention and is compelling to watch. That's to the benefit of at least giving the kind of strong focus the opera needs that is not provided by the decor or the direction, but it's no reflection on the rest of the cast assembled here. Francesco Meli, like many tenors before him, is faced with the intimidating challenge of 'Celeste Aida' with scarcely any time to warm up, but by the time we get to Act IV, he's firing on all cylinders, along with the rest of the cast.

Much of the musical strengths of Aida lie in the fact that it is a tour de force and a great ensemble work, that provides unparalleled opportunities for individual singers and chorus, but it's also a work that can really spark into life when all the individual characters work together and push each other to the heights required. Ekaterina Semenchuk on her own is just terrific, utterly compelling in Amneris's fury in that final act, but throughout she also works well off and alongside Netrebko and Meli. In any other production, Semenchuk would prove to be a formidable rival for Aida - and acceptably so - but well, it's hard to imagining anyone outshining Netrebko. Luca Salsi too provides a luxurious timbre for an Amonasro that complements Netrebko beautifully. With Muti conducting the impressive Vienna Philharmonic through a glorious account of the score, the work builds and coalesces through to a quite phenomenal final Act.

Musically at least, this is as good as it gets. Unfortunately it's held back and very nearly destroyed by an unimaginative and static stage production. Prior to this performance, the production stills held out some promise for a stylish spectacle that didn't rely on hokey middle-Eastern props, but its limitations become evident very quickly indeed. The set consists largely - very largely - of two huge blocks which revolve to alternately provide a wall on one side for background (and a screen for occasional projections) and a hollowed-out interior that essentially provides nothing more than a platform to arrange the cast and chorus for the big choral scenes to project oratorio-like towards the audience.

It really is as static as that. I don't think I've ever seen a Marche Triomphale quite as uneventful and underwhelming as this one. Everyone stands around looking outward and awkward, a few extras pretend to play trumpets and a group of dancers wearing animal skulls make some half-hearted moves. It's as if the opera has suddenly just stopped for a rest, breaking the momentum that has been built so far. The opera almost dies a death, and that is not the impression that this famous scene should make.

If the set-pieces were incompetently handled, there was no sign of any ideas or direction anywhere else. Netrebko, Meli, Semenchuk, Salsi and Tagliavini seemed to have been left to stand and sing, or if they were feeling particularly moved, to pace from one spot to another and project out to the audience. Netrebko, who has some ability as an actress or can at least inhabit a role well, makes a little more effort to actually engage with her lover, her rival and her father, and in the process brings more out of them. A few Syrian refugees are randomly projected onto the walls in a throwaway concession to contemporary relevance, but otherwise the director trusts in Verdi and Muti to do the bulk of the work, and fortunately that's managed very well. If you were listening to this on the radio it would undoubtedly have sounded very impressive, but as an opera performance it was sorely lacking.

Links: Salzburger Festspiele, ARTE Concert

Verdi - Aida (Brussels, 2017)

 

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2017

Alain Altinoglu, Stathis Livathinos, Adina Aaron, Andrea Carè, Nora Gubisch, Dimitris Tiliakos, Giacomo Prestia, Enrico Iori, Tamara Banjesevic, Julian Hubbard

ARTE Concert - June 2017

What is the point of Aida? Well obviously it started out as an attempt to bring Verdi out of retirement with the commission of writing a new work for the grand occasion of the new opera house in Cairo, and while the work was never completed for the occasion, it is nonetheless full of nationalistic sentiments and regional colour with grand marches and ceremonial processions. You can't commemorate that occasion every time the opera is produced, so obviously Aida must have something else worth celebrating since it remains one of the best-known and most frequently performed of Verdi operas.

Unfortunately, most directors miss the point of Aida or at least allow it to be submerged in the crowd-pleasing ceremonial aspects of the Grand Opéra spectacle and the bombastic arrangements of its Arabic melodies. Some have tried to be a little more adventurous with the work, looking more deeply at the relevance of its themes and seeking to find another way to bring them to the surface, but few are entirely successful at meeting not unreasonable audience expectations. That however is not going to deter a progressive opera company like La Monnaie from attempting to do something fresh and original with Aida.

So what is the point of Aida at La Monnaie? Aside from the familiar Verdi themes of father/daughter relationships and the conflict between love and duty, the opera is primarily concerned with power and oppression. It's about the crushing of human feelings, human love and one's own better nature in favour of a cause (war in this case) that is determined by rulers and informed by the will of the gods. It's about those who believe that they have authority and wisdom on their side but who are in reality all too human in their failings and weaknesses, and as a consequence are all the more capable of grave misjudgements considering the power they wield.

So tell me if Aida has a point in this day and age...

Having accepted that there is very much a point to Aida, the question then is how best to put that across on stage with the right emphasis that doesn't actually glorify power, war and oppression, but at the same time still retain something of the spectacle and the pure operatic qualities of Aida. You can try to introduce contemporary elements like Olivier Py's Paris production, but that tends to come over as heavy-handed and also risks dominating over the human love story that is a necessary part of the work. The director of the National Theatre of Greece, Stathis Livathinos, directing his first opera production, goes a little towards abstraction, but not so abstract that it doesn't relate to the underlying reality and the themes or provide necessary spectacle.

There is something ancient but also timeless in set designs for this production of Aida, Alexander Polzin doing well to avoid the imagery of ancient monuments and temples in the desert by symbolically showing the land as a small outcrop of rock; an island in a sea of darkness, that is venerated by the rulers and priests, glittered and shining. There's no mistaking it for anything grand and noble, with soldiers goose-stepping across the stage, blood spattered on their costumes, and there's no exotic dance of Moorish slaves either, the prisoners made to polish the rock during the opera's ballet, ground down into the gleaming rock by their captors until they scream.

The colour coding of the costume design by Andrea Schmidt-Futterer and the perfect lighting by Alekos Anastasiou contribute exceptionally well to defining and differentiating between the various classes and groups of rulers, priests, warriors, common people and slaves. The slaves all wear plain dark blue shifts, the priests in wrapped pale blue robes with Anubis masks - with the High Priest adorned with porcupine-like spikes - the ruling classes in gold, the common people in grey, the warriors in purple. Wonderfully choreographed and directed, it all still captures what is uniquely grand about Aida without the tired grand opera mannerisms, managing to look spectacular as well as stylish and colourful, albeit within a more limited and muted palette.

A more muted palette is also applied to the reduced La Monnaie orchestration under Alain Altinoglu. It can seem a little underplayed and lack the impact of the more bombastic approach, but Aida is a late period Verdi opera where it is worth holding back a little to allow the actual notes of the music to express their own qualities. As a consequence, you can hear the beautiful phrasing of the individual instruments and sections which is all too often submerged under volume and speed. It's not the full-blooded Verdi that many would expect and no doubt prefer, but I thought this account was very refreshing and revealing of other qualities in Verdi's writing, as well as better attuned to the underlying sentiment and themes of the drama.

I don't think you can play an opera like Aida naturalistically, but it doesn't deserve irony either. Stathis Livathinos finds a good balance between stylisation that plays to the themes and the dramatic and musical conventions that call for a certain amount of standing and delivering. The singing is also excellent for what is a very demanding work, all of the singers avoiding any strident expression. Andrea Carè's Radamès and Dimitris Tiliakos as Amonasro fare best with secure and lyrical delivery of their parts. Aida and Amneris present rather more challenges for Adina Aaron and Nora Gubisch who are a more little wavering in pitch and delivery in places, but both bring dramatic character and romantic personality to the roles rather than fall back on operatic mannerisms.

All efforts in trying to bring something new and fresh to Aida however are to no avail if the conclusion fails to deliver emotionally and dramatically (as this season's Madama Butterfly failed to do at La Monnaie). A huge block of stone hanging ominously over the stage and slowly descending to enclose Aida and Radamès while they sang their love duet in delirium was however very affecting and in keeping with the production's question of the price to be paid for power and how it oppresses the human spirit. Such a fresh and ambitious approach to Aida is a difficult task to carry off, but Livathinos and Altinoglu do it with style at La Monnaie, the opera still remaining impressive, but in the right way.

Links: La Monnaie-De Munt, ARTE Concert

Verdi - Aida (Verona 2013 - Blu-ray)

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Arena di Verona, 2013

Omer Meir Wellber, Carlus Padrissa, Àlex Ollé, La Fura dels Baus, Hui He, Fabio Sartori, Giovanna Casolla, Roberto Tagliavini, Ambroglio Maestri, Adrian Sampetrean, Carlo Bosi, Elena Rossi

Bel Air - Blu-ray

You don't often see a minimally dressed stage for a production of Aida, and you certainly won't be accustomed to see it at a production in the open air Arena di Verona, where Franco Zeffirelli's vast, flamboyant and extravagant staging is normally the house production. Minimalism isn't something you associate either with La Fura dels Baus, but when the camera sweeps over the walls of the ancient Roman arena, there's literally nothing on the stage but two narrow crane scaffolds. In the year when Verona celebrated Verdi's masterpiece with two productions, one a recreation of the original production and one experimental, it would be a surprise if the Catalan team didn't rise to the challenge of the occasion in this venue.

There may be something to be said for taking the focus away from the spectacle and giving more attention to the actual human dilemma in Aida, but if there is, I haven't seen it. The godfather of theatrical minimalism Robert Wilson didn't make a convincing case for it, so it may well be that Verdi's grand conception and the music he writes for Aida does indeed demand big gestures. And an audience expects to be treated to a spectacle in Aida. La Fura dels Baus therefore take a bit of a risk with their approach, but one of their strengths is indeed finding the right scale for a work and the site-specific environment that it is staged in. Their Aida isn't actually minimalist, it just takes advantage of the natural environment. Short of putting on the work beside the Pyramids in Egypt, there's hardly a more suitably ancient setting for Aida than the Roman amphitheatre in Verona.

Nor, despite initial appearances, is the stage entirely bare for the whole performance. Just before the overture, a few extras dressed as old-style archaeologists from the British Museum use local workers to reassemble part of an old temple wall, the implication presumably being that we are going to build up a view of an ancient past. The stage does indeed start to accumulate props as the opera progresses, building up a concept that might not entirely be comprehensible and might take some fantastical leaps of imagination, but it does in a way reflect the pace and the deepening emotional and dramatic building of the drama. In terms of how this culminates in Aida's famous conclusion, there's now a fully-fledged technologically-elaborate La Fura dels Baus set that hits the dramatic high-point with all the force that an audience expects of this work.

For the earlier part of the production then just as the sun is setting, Padrissa and Ollé allow the location to do most of the work for them. The ballets and processions all involve large numbers of supernumeraries walking through the audience with lighted football-sized globes and lining up in the upper tiers at the back of the amphitheatre. It's simple but effective. Things get a little more elaborate (and confusing) when we come to the Triumphal March, which involves an acrobat hanging on a cable (but not singers in this Fura production for a change), with mechanical elephants and camels marched across the stage, as well as troops in scarab buggies and a forklift truck carrying reflective silver cubes. The impression it gives is of a stylised ancient Egypt in the costume design and make-up, but almost a science-fiction version of it.

Almost without noticing it however, the stage gradually accumulates and transforms. Large inflatable Dali-like soft shapes arise in the background, which when lit and projected upon, give a vague impression of sand dunes. The silver cubes meanwhile are assembled into a large concave cross, which gradually descends at the end of the opera to enclose Aida and Radamès in their tomb. Elsewhere, the set designers are able to recreate a stylised Nile riverbank for Act III, complete with water, plastic-backed crocodiles, and waving palm fronds made of the same cables that are even used to create a futuristic dress for Aida. On paper it sounds like a terrible way to stage Aida. There's no attempt to make any commentary on war, imperialism or nationalism in the concept, but it proves nonetheless to be remarkably effective both as a spectacle and as support for the love drama.

As such, the production design doesn't overwhelm the human characters at the heart of Aida, nor does it overwhelm the performers. Thankfully, the singing is also strong enough for there never be any danger of that happening. Hui He is even stronger in the role of Aida here than in the previous version of the role I've heard her sing (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino). Her voice is fuller here (at the cost perhaps of a little clarity of diction), with a soft legato that reaches those high-notes much more smoothly. I didn't see much of an emotional connection to the character in her performance, but it's sung well and clearly gets out there to the arena audience. Fabio Sartori's voice is also big enough if not terribly lyrical and his notes stray a little, but he's just about good enough for Radamès. I most enjoyed Giovanna Casolla's Amneris. She has a firm, commanding voice for the most part and manages to be suitably formidable while demonstrating a human side.

The open-air nature of the Arena di Verona doesn't give the best acoustics to judge the performance of the orchestra, but Omer Meir Wellber conducts the work well through all its dramatic points and show pieces. The visual and audio qualities of the video recording are also restricted somewhat by the venue, which means that the Blu-ray isn't always as clear as it might be as it tries to cope with the changing light conditions. An attempt to capture the full impact of a large-scale La Fura dels Baus production like this is also difficult, but the filming does reasonably well. The Blu-ray is BD25, region-free, with subtitles in Italian, German, French, English and Spanish.

Verdi - Aida

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Opéra National de Paris, 2013

Philippe Jordan, Olivier Py, Carlo Cigni, Elena Bocharova, Lucrezia Garcia, Robert Dean Smith, Roberto Scandiuzzi, Sergey Murzaev, Oleksiy Palchykov, Elodie Hache

Opéra Bastille - 6 November 2013

There's definitely something wrong when you come out of a performance of Verdi's Aida feeling somewhat underwhelmed by it all.  In the case of this work bigger does often equate with better. You wouldn't think that there was much danger of the production design of Olivier Py's Aida for the Paris Opera ever being described as underwelming. Quite the reverse. Pierre-André Weitz's designs filled the huge expanse of the Bastille stage from front to back and even made extensive use of the full height of the stage. More than just grand and epic, the production has a touch of Midas about it, with solid gold temples, columns and objects making an impressive and imposing set. Yet underwhelming it was, a "bling" Aida with no heart of gold.

There was to this end perhaps one crucial thing missing from this production of Aida. Egypt. Attempting to avoid the exotic mannerisms and trappings of the work as a spectacle of accumulated clichés is admirable. Setting it in Verdi's period is not necessarily a bad idea either, since the composer was undoubtedly influenced more by the experiences of his own time than the history of Ancient Egypt, but by looking realistically at the context of Aida the director misses the point of the work entirely. For Olivier Py, it's all about the abuse of political and religious power, it's a diatribe against colonialism and oppression and, indeed most certainly, the images presented here successfully express the striving for enormous power and wealth that crushes finer human sentiments.

Unfortunately, those human sentiments are really what lie at the heart of the work and they aren't given the same consideration in Py's production. Aida is first and foremost a human story, a love story, a tragedy. The rest is just background. The horror of war, the injustice of a cruel regime is certainly there, but it shouldn't dominate. It's hard to compete with all those processions, the spectacle and the choral glorification of nationalistic pride and hatred for the enemy, but the real challenge of staging Aida is to use all that as a contrast to the love story at the heart of the work, and that is indeed what makes Aida great.

It might have helped if you could identify then who exactly was the enemy in this production. An Italian flag is waved at the start during the overture by a defiant rebel who is kicked and beaten by soldiers who are dressed in the more modern military aspect of the French forces in Algeria who wave an Austrian flag. The pomp and ceremony of the Triumphal March is undercut with misplaced Holocaust imagery with the defeated Ethiopians looking like Jewish refugees. The Ku Klux Klan perform the interrogation of Radamès by a burning cross, while the High Priests who pronounce his sentence clearly belong to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. There's everything here except Egypt, which ironically might actually be more topical considering world current events.  

Admittedly, the set design is hugely impressive. It's a masterpiece of construction with parts revolving and sliding into place, forming temples, altars and raised columns. Everything, even a tank that is wheeled on, looks made of solid gold, attesting to the sense of wealth being aligned with oppression. As you would expect, the spectacle is most pronounced during the Triumphal March, but there is an almost total disconnect between the staging and the actual music that doesn't serve the work well nor effectively get to the heart of sentiments at play. The huge processions are reduced here to a couple performing a ballet, while the whole stage rises to reveal three piles of naked bodies taken from a gas chamber. The whole thing is a mess, leaving the viewer to untangle all the references to colonialism and oppression that just get in the way of the real heart of the love-triangle nature of the story.

The singing at least was very good, but the characters were unfortunately somewhat overwhelmed by the context of the production. Lucrezia Garcia was an exceptionally good Aida in some parts but a little shaky in others, struggling to keep up on occasion with the pace of Philippe Jordan's conducting. Verdi isn't where Robert Dean Smith can be heard at his best, but he was a good Radamès, only being defeated by the scale and emphasis of the production itself. Aida can often stand or fall on the strength of a good Amneris, but Elena Bocharova was unable to make the necessary impact here. Sergey Murzaev's Amonasro give the best performance of the evening - cool, regal and authoritative - but Roberto Scandiuzzi's High Priest and Carlo Cigni's King also gave solid performances. There are evidently few problems casting for voices at the lower-end of Verdi roles.

If the production and performances were overall underwhelming, there was at least some compensation in the punchy musical performance of Verdi's score by the massed orchestra of the Paris Opera under the complete control of Philippe Jordan. The chorus too brought all the necessary impact in all the right places, but neither was well-served by the production design. If anything it just confirmed that you can't mess around with Aida. It may seem direct and full of grand, epic gestures, but there is a delicate equilibrium that needs to be maintained through the balance of the staging and the music. Olivier Py's production doesn't even come close.

Verdi - Aida

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Firenze 2011

Zubin Mehta, Ferzan Ozpetek, Hui He, Marco Berti, Luciana D’Intino, Roberto Tagliavini, Giacomo Prestia, Ambrogio Maestri, Saverio Fiore, Catarina di Tonno

Arthaus Musik

Aida is a tricky opera to stage effectively. It doesn’t hold up to modernisation or revisionism, demanding a very specific mood and setting that one messes with at one’s peril. I’ve seen it done before in a Risorgimento updating to Verdi’s time and in Robert Wilson’s particular minimalist style, both of which were interesting, but neither were entirely successful. On the other hand, a traditional approach to Aida requires both a big stage to match the grandeur of Verdi’s compositions of ceremonial marches through ancient monuments, and not everyone has the budget to go for the Full Zeffirelli. Even then however, the lack of dramatic incident and the demands placed on the singers mean that even a traditional setting can be rather static. Directed by Turkish-Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek, the Florence production of Aida, recorded here in 2011, tends towards the traditional and looks marvellous, but in how it approaches those other considerable challenges that a staging of the opera presents, it unfortunately falls well short of the mark.

That’s disappointing from a musical point of view, particularly as we have as distinguished a musical director as Zubin Metha conducting the orchestra, for if there’s at least one thing you would hope to count on from any production of Aida, it’s that it presents a vigorous account of Verdi’s dynamic score. Aida is one of the most melodic and memorable of late Verdi operas, with hints of grand opera influence, but it’s also one that is attuned to the emotional content of the drama with an exotic flavour for its Egyptian setting. The performance initially feels somewhat perfunctory, for the first Act at least, a run-through with no real commitment on the part of the musicians or the conductor. It improves in subsequent acts, warming to the characters and their situation, but there’s never a sense that Metha is able to get the orchestra to do full justice to the dynamic theatricality of Verdi’s majestic score.

If that’s the case – and it’s only my opinion – it’s at least in step with the lack of dynamism elsewhere in the production. The stage sets, designed by Dante Ferretti, look marvellous – grand statues and monuments bathed in golden light, with colourful sunsets and deep blue moonlit night scenes – and the costumes are traditional and exotic. Stage director Ferzan Ozpetek however is unable to find anything for the singers do on stage but stand and project out to an audience, while priests and choruses stand grouped or march in solemn procession. There’s no question of their being any acting involved. Only once is there a suggestion of anything with imagination and that occurs briefly when the traditional pomp and patriotic fervour of the Triumphal March is initially undercut by the appearance on the stage of a young bloodstained child, looking bewildered by the celebration of the slaughter that has occurred. It’s a throwaway touch however, soon forgotten under the more traditional, but not particularly imaginatively choreographed battle ballet that follows.

Again, a lack of drama or ideas on the stage wouldn’t be much of a problem – it’s one of the issues with Aida – if only the singers were capable of making up for the slack elsewhere. Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of strong singing to sufficiently redeem this production. Marco Berti has a fine tone of voice as Radamès, but his technique is all off and his ‘Celeste Aida’ is a struggle. He comes through however in Act IV where it counts. Luciana D’Intino is a weak Amneris, her singing shrill and unpleasant, without sufficient force or personality to carry the role – an unfortunate drawback, since it’s this character who has perhaps the most important central role in the opera. Hui He’s Aida is about the best there is here, her Act III duets coming over well, particularly her duet with a fine Ambrogio Maestri as Amanasro. Without a strong enough Amneris however to hammer home Act IV after the rallying that comes through from the cast and orchestra in Act III, it’s all to little avail.

There are no extra features on the Blu-ray, so the single-layer BD25 is generally fine for the two-and-a-half hour opera. The image quality is excellent throughout, 1080i full-HD, with only a little sign of compression artefacts during a couple of faster pans of the camera. The audio tracks are the customary PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and there’s a decent tone and clarity to both. Subtitles are in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Korean. The disc is All Region.

Verdi - Aida

Giuseppe Verdi - Aida

Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2009

Daniele Gatti, Sonja Frisell, Roberto Scandiuzzi, Johan Botha, Dolora Zajick, Violeta Urmana, Stefan Kocán, Adam Laurence Herskowitz, Jennifer Check, Carlo Guelfi

Decca

Although there is an intimate and tragic love story at its heart, Aida is set against the exotic background of the Egypt of the Pharaohs, and is full of patriotic, nationalistic sentiments, as the Egyptian army prepare to go to war to fight off a revolt by the Ethiopians. It’s a perfect subject, in other words, for Verdi, and it was undoubtedly the nature of the storyline, much more than any commission for the new opera house in Cairo (which he repeatedly refused) or the grand occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal, that encouraged him to return to opera composition in 1871. This return would herald a new style of opera that we would see from Verdi in his final works, one that is mindful of the innovations introduced by Wagner, but which still retains elements here of bel canto in an opera that is filled with memorable arias and melodies. Despite its setting and the use of exotic Oriental melodies – which really see Verdi at his most inventive and original – Aida is very much an Italian opera, and one that is thoroughly and recognisably a true Verdi opera.

Considering its origins and its setting – whether it was composed for a grand occasion or not – Verdi’s Aida is appropriately stately in its expressions of nationalistic pride and identity, with extravagant marches, battle hymns, ceremonial processions and dances. There’s no point in doing Aida in a minimalist style, as Robert Wilson has done in the past (although it’s certainly interesting to see something different attempted) – this is an opera that just calls out for a grand scale production. If you haven’t got a stage the size of the Arena di Verona, and a director like Franco Zeffirelli to fill it, the nearest grand, traditionally staged Aida you are going to find is this Sonja Frisell production – now over twenty years old – for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

It’s a big production in every respect – and yes, I include the size of the singers in this – with towering temples, the stage filled with chorus, troops, dancers and well-tanned, bare-chested slaves, even horses and chariots, all arranged in grand ceremonial processions and formations. It’s unfortunately a little too static – an impressive spectacle even if it is a little bit kitsch, but not much thought has been put into the interaction between the main players. They just walk on in most cases, sing their part, and walk back off again. But, this is what you expect of an Aida production – particularly a traditional one at the Met – and really, you’d feel somewhat short-changed if it didn’t have all the other bells and whistles (and trumpets) .

You won’t feel short-changed by the singers here either. Johan Botha is one of the finest tenors in the world, a great Wagnerian heldentenor, which serves him in good stead for this particular Verdi opera. I don’t know about his acting ability – there’s not much required here of Ramadès – but he has an ability to fill his roles with life, principally through the wonderful warmth of tone of his voice. Violeta Urmana is the Verdian soprano of choice at the moment, and she is fine singing the role of Aida, if again there are not any real acting demands placed on her. Dolora Zajick is an experienced Amneris and sings the role well, but does unfortunately look constipated when singing (sorry, but she does). The final duet notwithstanding, Act IV of Aida belongs to Amneris however, Verdi giving her character real depth and human passion, and Dolora Zajick launches into it with relish, making perhaps the strongest impression on the whole production, which is a little lacking in energy elsewhere.

Recorded live for worldwide broadcast in 2009 for the Met’s Live in HD programme, the production looks fantastic in High Definition, is colourful and well-lit. The audio mixes are in PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and, allowing for one or two minor sound issues with the live mix which is a little bit echoing in places, they both sound fine, the surround in particular dispersing the choral singing well. Extras on the BD include edited-down interviews (I’d have been happy to listen to much more of this) conducted by Renée Fleming with the cast and extras.