Aida

by Giuseppe Verdi (libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni)

seen by live streaming from The Metropolitan Opera New York on 6 October 2018

Nicola Luisotti conducts Sonja Frisell's production of Aida with Anna Netrebko as Aida, Anit Rachvelishvili as Amneris and Aleksandrs Antonenko as Radamès. The spectacular sets are designed by Gianni Quaranta.

The vast Met stage is ideal for the grander aspects of this, one of the grandest of 'grand operas'. The dedication of the new war leader is wonderfully staged in hieratic symmetry, while the triumphant return of the victorious army is even more splendid, with plenty of supernumerary troops and several horses, to say nothing of welcoming crowds and courtiers. But this monumentality can prove a bit problematic for the more intimate scenes. This is largely overcome by night-time settings, and by occasional restrictions of space by the use of extra statues, pillars and walls which appear during scene breaks, while the final entombment is concentrated on a small acting space which chillingly disappears downwards from view as the rejected princess Amneris prays for peace above the condemned lovers. When one sees the stage hands hard at work during the intervals putting these massive sets into place one can only marvel at the technical ingenuity and precision of the whole enterprise, even though these behind-the-scenes glimpses tend to distract from the stage illusion of the actual production.

The cast rose to the challenge of the environment, and even successfully dominated it in the case of the two female soloists. Anna Netrebko brought a mixture of trepidation and steeliness to her role as Aida, effortlessly signalling the degradation of servitude, the determination of love and the conflict of divided loyalties, while Anita Rachvelishvili as Amneris revealed an astonishing vocal range of great power and flexibility, with a superb control of the whole mezzo register at her command to reveal the mixture of hope, jealousy and hollow vengeance that befalls the unloved princess. The Radamès of Aleksandrs Antonenko was impassioned but the character is hardly a deep one.

Stirring stuff!