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 - Otello (Orange 2014 - Webcast)
Giuseppe Verdi - Otello
Chorégies d'Orange, 2014
Myung Whun Chung, Nadine Duffaut, Roberto Alagna, Inva Mula, Sophie Pondjiclis, Seng-Hyoun Ko, Florian Laconi, Enrico Iori, Julien Dran, Jean-Marie Delpas, Yann Toussaint
France TV, Culturebox - August 2014
Otello wouldn't be the most obvious or the most popular choice for a performance at the open air Chorégies d'Orange amphitheatre. It's unquestionably one of Verdi's greatest works and it certainly has strong dramatic credentials, but it's still not something you would think of as a "stadium opera". Judging by its reception and the performance here - broadcast live on French television and streamed on the internet - it's obvious that this passionate and powerful work can strike a chord with a wider audience if it has the right team in place.
If the actual production here lacks imagination and is unambitiously directed, it nonetheless succeeds in how it identifies and puts across the real strengths of the work. That's evident right from the outset where Verdi's earth-shattering opening, lacking even an overture, launches right into the middle of a storm at sea and leaves no place for shelter. A massed chorus stirs up the tensions as to whether the ships at sea will survive the onslaught of Verdi's scoring. Along with the impressive setting of the ancient Roman open-air amphitheatre, it builds up to provide a suitably big entrance for Otello.
Ah, and there's the secret ingredient to the Orange production, or perhaps the key resource that they place all their faith in. Roberto Alagna is Otello. He may be short in stature, but Alagna is not short in personality and he certainly knows how to make an entrance when given a build-up like this. (I've seen him work a similar trick just as successfully and without having to sing a note in Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini). Here Otello's heroic entrance is emphasised by him bearing the decapitated head of the leader of the defeated Turkish fleet, striding forward onto the stage, showering gold crowns to the waiting masses. Talk about going down a storm...
Alagna proves to be a good choice for Otello, but it's by no means an obvious one. Verdi's Otello is a big role to fill, not just in terms of personality but the singing demands are considerable, requiring force as well as lyricism, and quite a bit of stamina. Alagna isn't perfect and the strain shows, but he hardly puts a foot wrong and gives a committed performance. It's also something of a star performance. Either he doesn't appear to be terribly well directed in this production or he is left to his own devices, striking heroic poses, and poses of heroic anguish, never missing an opportunity to (literally) bare his chest. It's not a subtle performance, but it's one with enough personality to fill the arena.
Inva Mula plays Desdemona with an equal amount of big-gesture emoting, but Otello is grand melodrama. Mula sings well and makes a suitably good impression alongside Alagna. You have to wait to Act III and IV to see if she has what it takes to deliver the heightened sentiments and challenges of characterisation, and she carries it off well. Sophie Pondjiclis' singing of Emilia was strong enough but a little bit wayward. Seng-Hyoun Ko sang Iago well, but there didn't appear to be a great deal of effort put into interpreting or directing his character.
As far as directing went though, Nadine Duffaut didn't seem to have a lot to offer. With Alagna capable of dominating, with Verdi's powerful score conducted well by Myung Whun Chung, and with an impressive arena setting that needed little dressing, there really wasn't any need to do a lot more with the production. There were a few enhancements here and there, a broken mirror of suitable scale and suggestion on which pre-filmed close-ups were projected, all of which gave the production some character, even if the costumes were rather generically traditional. It was just enough however to work well, and there would have been few disappointed with the outcome.
Links: Culturebox
Giuseppe Verdi - Macbeth
Teatro Regio di Parma, 2006
Bruno Bartoletti, Liliana Cavani, Leo Nucci, Enrico Iori, Sylvie Valayre, Tiziana Tramonti, Roberto Iuliano, Nicola Pascoli, Enrico Turco, Davide Ronzoni, Ricardo di Stefano, Noris Norgogelli
C-Major, Tutto Verdi - DVD
There are quite a few versions of Verdi's Macbeth now available on DVD and BD, some of them using the composer's original 1847 version of the score, others working from the 1865 revision, some of them combining the best elements of both. Using the full 1865 version written for Paris, complete with ballet sequences, this recording of Macbeth from the Teatro Regio di Parma in 2006 is however simply one of the best. It's probably also one of the most straightforward in terms of a traditional period staging, but that doesn't mean that it's in any way lacking a strong meaningful visual sensibility, and there are even one or two curious conceptual elements to consider here as well.
Judging by the overhead air raid sirens and WWII searchlights that one can see during the opening credits and by the dress of the chorus sitting to the side like an on-stage audience, Liliana Cavani's production gives the impression of it being an audience from the 1940s watching a performance of Shakespeare's play in London during the war. Apart from the obvious war parallel, it's unclear what exactly the purpose of this is since it really has little impact on the actual main performance of the work itself, which is traditionally Shakespearean in look and intent. Whatever the intentions are, it remains nonetheless an impressive account, full of drive, each scene perfectly attuned to the dramatic content and to the precise tone that Verdi also sets for the work.
The strength of the work as a whole becomes evident in the final fourth Act, which can only have the necessary impact if everything leading up to it has been up to the mark. 'Patria opressa!' is delivered emphatically by the chorus, MacDuff's presence lending an air of tragic defiance to the horrors that Macbeth has laid upon the land. That's followed with a chilling Lady Macbeth sleepwalking scene and then an agonised Macbeth, slumped on the throne, alone in a darkened room, defiantly gripping a sceptre, wanting to believe in the weird sisters' prophesy that his position is secure despite the evidence to the contrary - 'Perfidi! All' anglo contro me v'unite!'. Only the fight scene leading to Macbeth's being bundled off the stage in his death scene is unconvincingly staged, but without the 'Mal per me' aria in the revised version of Macbeth, the impact here is indeed lessened.
Unusually for a performance of the 1865 version, this production even includes Verdi's added ballet music, with a full 10-minute sequence opening Act III's reappearance of the weird sisters. Like most ballet inserts they do hold back the dramatic flow to a large extent - which is why they are consequently often cut - and there's nothing particularly imaginative about the choreography here, but it's interesting to see an attempt made to integrate it into the work. The quality of the playing and the performances enhance the production here even further. It's a stirring, nuanced account on every level - a little overly controlled and measured perhaps by conductor Bruno Bartoletti, but the murderous intent of the work is handled with sensitivity and consequently it's powerful without ever being bombastic.
The singing is also everything you would expect from a production this committed to the intent of the work, with Leo Nucci giving a marvellous, intense and deeply involved performance that is full of feeling for the character of Macbeth. 'La luce langue' is usually a good indication for the measure of Lady Macbeth and Sylvie Valayre proves to be not only capable of meeting its demands, but she remains strong and consistent throughout the rest of the opera - as indicated above, for example, in the Act IV sleepwalking scene. There are no weak elements either elsewhere in this Macbeth's Banquo (Enrico Iori) or its MacDuff (Roberto Iuliano).
This 2006 production of Macbeth from the Teatro Regio di Parma is released on DVD and Blu-ray by C-Major as part of their Tutto Verdi collection. Viewed on DVD, the production looks and sounds well, with a widescreen transfer and audio tracks in PCM Stereo and DTS 5.1, the surround mix in particular packing a punch. The extra features contain the usual 10 minute Introduction, which places the work in the context of Verdi's career and gives an illustrated synopsis of the plot and characters. The DVD is region-free, with subtitles in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.
