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
John Adams - Nixon in China
Wide Open Opera, Dublin 2014
Fergus Sheil, Michael Cavanagh, Barry Ryan, Claudia Boyle, James Cleverton, Hubert Francis, John Molloy, Audrey Luna, Sharon Carty, Imelda Drumm, Doreen Curran
Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, Dublin - 11 May 2014
For a modern opera that is based on a relatively recent historical event, John Adams' Nixon in China is proving to be an enduring work that continues to gain new productions worldwide. What is even more surprising, and which perhaps accounts for the place it is gaining in the repertoire, is how each production manages to find a new way of approaching the work's themes. It's clear that Nixon in China is about more than one specific event of historical significance only to the 1970s, but is a work of multifaceted complexity that makes it open to continuous reinterpretation and re-evaluation.
Undoubtedly, that's got a lot to do with Alice Goodman's libretto. It doesn't entirely hold together and it can be difficult to comprehend at times, getting bogged down in the competing ideological, political and philosophical views of each of the participants in US President Nixon's visit to Communist China in 1972. Certain passages of the opera feel the weight of some very obscure esoterica, but the libretto also has the ability and the insight to look beneath the jargon, the showmanship and the politicking to make some very pertinent points about the nature of the figures in question as human beings.
In order for the work to endure however, it needs to extend this out beyond the specific to the universal, and while the political landscape has changed much in the intervening years, with the respective powers and influence of both China and the USA starting to reverse, the human aspirations behind them hasn't changed that much. Even if Nixon in China were only to remind us of this fact, highlighting the present by showing us how it once was, or how indeed it all started to change from a globalised technological perspective, it would still be an interesting work, but as this latest Dublin production from Wide Open Opera makes clear, there's evidently much more to the opera than that.
Wide Open Opera's Dublin production of Nixon in China for example threw up a new aspect to the work that I had never considered before. Is Nixon in China a feminist opera? It seems unlikely for a work set in the 1970s based on the meeting between two male heads of state alternately back-slapping each other and competing to prove the supremacy of their vision of the world. In fact, with Henry Kissinger's reputation and attitude towards women satirised in the dances of Act II ("Whip her to death!"), with Pat Nixon being the model First Lady and housewife, deferential to her husband's important career, and China's treatment of women hardly being anything to be proud of, despite Chiang Ch'ing's contribution to the Cultural Revolution, it's not surprising that the possibility of the work having a feminist agenda is rarely considered.
The fact that these issues are shown at all, even in a seemingly unfavourable light, is significant, but the women in Nixon in China are actually very strong personalities, and can even be said to be the true heart of the work. Part of this might be to do with the librettist being female, but in reality it's much more to do with there being considerable thought and attention paid equally to all of the main characters. In attempting to make them real, in attempting to look beneath the surface and see a real person, those issues and how Pat Nixon and Chiang Ch'ing might feel about them are taken into consideration. If there is a feminist view in Nixon in China, what is wonderful is that it's not presented in any dogmatic fashion, but arises out of treating each of the characters as equals in human terms. It's when this conflicts with the public personas, and with the male and the political agendas, that the whole question becomes much more complex.
Part of the reason why there are so many ways of interpreting and looking at Nixon in China is just down to the nature of its creation, and the nature of opera itself. It's not just Alice Goodman's libretto that is important or the only aspect of the opera that plays with ideas, but rather it's the multidisciplinary nature of how it interacts and conflicts with real-life, with the focus, structure and dramatic concept of Peter Sellars' original idea, and with John Adams' music. That reflects and complements the competing personalities on the stage and it creates a dialectic that really opens the work up. And when you hand that over to a new stage director, a new music director and new singers, you have something that can be even more fluid and mutable.
Wide Open Opera's production of Nixon in China originates from Michael Kavanagh's 2010 production for Vancouver Opera. It's a very fine production that retains the historical basis of Nixon's visit to China and adheres relatively closely to Peter Sellars' structuring of the work. At the same time however it finds its own way to capture the spectacle and the grandeur of the event and get underneath to the rather more difficult to define aspects of the personalities that are brought out by the libretto and the music. Broadly speaking however, the tone of the work and the stage direction is defined by its three-act structure.
Act I is all show, making use of impressive projections that show Air Force One landing in Peking Airport, using bold colours and national flags to indicate the jostling for power, position and philosophical superiority between the leaders of the two great nations. There is at the same time a mutual respect and appreciation for each other, for the power that they wield and how they exercise it, and both are fully aware that this is a unique and unprecedented opportunity to extend their influence and reputation across the world via new satellite technology. The staging fully supports the joyous fervour that this generates, each of them dancing around, drunk on power, lost in their own wonderfulness.
Dancing in fact plays a large part in this production, and it highlights just how important it actually is as another means of expression in the work itself. Aside from the obvious Revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women in Act II (a dance of death, liberation), there are references to dancing at the ball put in honour of the Nixons in Act I (a dance of celebration, assertion, joy) and there's a melancholy waltz in Act III (a slow dance of sadness and introspection), each of which conforms perfectly to the tone of the three acts. The deeper interiority of Act III is more difficult to stage and make work than the more obvious tone and the action of the first two acts, and it doesn't quite come together in the opera itself, but Michael Cavanagh's direction, the use of mists (for time, memory, distance) and the use of connections made though the dancing, finds a through-line that holds it all together surprisingly well.
It's important that all this works with the music and singing performances. The musical challenges alone are considerable for a work that makes use of unconventional orchestration with saxophones and electronic keyboards, but Fergus Sheil and the RTE National Symphony Orchestra provided an invigorating and thrilling performance that balanced the rhythms with the nature of the drama expressed in the libretto and on the stage, as well as with the expression of the singers. The program notes that microphones are required to amplify the singers above the orchestra (although a reduced orchestration allowed the Châtelet in Paris to perform it acoustically), but the singing, diction and expression was so strong here that you scarcely believed it was necessary.
As if to confirm the importance of the women figures, the singing was particularly impressive from Claudia Boyle and Audrey Luna. Claudia Boyle's Pat Nixon was confident and accomplished, but touching too, with a real sense of sympathy for her character and the importance of her as the heart of the opera. Audrey Luna's Chiang Ch'ing saw more of the stratospheric notes the coloratura soprano hit in her Met performance of Ariel in Adès' The Tempest. Where the use of microphones might have been useful here was in allowing the male singers to sing rather than project. Barry Ryan's Nixon was accordingly wonderfully musical, showing the lyrical qualities that are in the writing of this character which we rarely hear in English language opera. Like Ryan, we also had sensitive performances from James Cleverton as Chou En-lai, Hubert Francis as Mao Tse-tung, with John Molloy fully entering into the spirit of the playful but sinisterly depicted Henry Kissinger.
Presenting a modern opera to a Dublin audience was always going to be a challenge, but it's one that, following their marvellous The Importance of Being Earnest, has again paid off impressively for Wide Open Opera. This is a far cry from La Traviata or Madama Butterfly, and a new and sometimes challenging experience for many, but judging from the enthusiastic response of the audience at the opening night at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre for Nixon in China, many were clearly struck at the possibilities this form of music theatre can offer. That's clearly a mark of Wide Open Opera's approach to ensuring quality at every level, and genuinely having something new to bring to the arts and theatre-going public in Ireland.
