Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
So, I went to The Metropolitan Opera’s New 12 months’s Eve Gala efficiency of Verdi’s Aïda having studied a number of notable recordings and scholarly articles on the work’s composition, buoyed by a persistent “effectively, possibly…”: indicators of the troubling levels of post-liberal arts decadence and naiveté I’ve not managed to shake. I had supposed to begin the brand new 12 months with a considerate, measured engagement with director Michael Mayer’s manufacturing, which purports to forefront the opera’s relationship to French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette and his archeological work. I had learn Edward Stated. I used to be prepared.
Then I noticed Aïda. That’s not solely honest: by the tip of the third act, my eyes had locked right into a cringing squint, and I had kind of braced myself towards it. However I’ll endeavor to make sense of all of it.
First, there have been features of the manufacturing I loved. Not like the earlier Sonia Frisell manufacturing, Christine Jones’s units, illuminated by a collection of jewel-toned projections by 59 Studio, conceded that the Previous Kingdom might have certainly had colours apart from sandstone and the occasional blue accent. The burnished Temple of Ptah was beautiful. Costumes by Susan Hilferty had been flattering. Wigs and hairstyling conformed to the singers’ pure hair varieties and textures, thank God.
Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Throughout Radamès’s investiture, choreographer Oleg Glushkov changed the everyday nubile priestesses with a parade of younger acolytes held aloft by the monks like dangling corpses. It was an efficient picture. The dance of the Moorish slaves grew to become a second of real bonding between Amneris and her handmaidens. Each decisions did a lot to strip the opera of its extra exotic-exhibitionist tendencies. And the Triumphal Scene, one among opera’s nice site visitors jams, moved effectively and with minimal visible muddle.
However then we arrive at Mayer’s Aïda-through-archeology idea. Because the strings softly rise in the course of the Prelude, an archeologist descends from a cloud of mud into the ruins of the palace complicated. (The uncredited actor stumbled out of his harness, poor factor.) Quickly the horns take part and the strings swell to fortissimo, and the archeologist flashes his torch towards the inscriptions, which develop into flush with projected colours. His gaze illuminates the useless metropolis. Awe-struck, he fantasizes.
Enter Ramfis and Radamès. The story begins. From there a number of comely archeologists enter the motion at intervals, accompanied by the martial fanfares that usually announce the monks’ arrival. They sketch hieroglyphs, survey, and clear mud within the throes of accelerating marvel. In the course of the Triumphal Scene, they haul treasures out of the ruins because the Egyptians of their imaginings stare blankly forward; the actual conquerors have arrived. Two archeologists—one male, one feminine—flank Amneris as she implores Isis for peace within the opera’s closing moments, their eyes stuffed with sympathy.
Mayer’s intentions are clear: contextualize the work with out compromising the Met’s capacity to ship spectacle, acknowledge the historical past whereas preserving the fantasy. Frankly, I discover this strategy irresponsible. Apart from linking the archeologists to some menacing musical passages, the staging of those interlopers is basically uncritical and unhistorical. They’re an enthusiastic, collegial bunch of youngish individuals who strut about in good khaki uniforms—it’s like watching a scout group’s tour into Egypt.
The Egyptian staff who did many of the precise bodily excavation work for Mariette and others of his ilk don’t determine in Mayer’s imaginative and prescient; the European “discoverers” roll up their sleeves and get it accomplished, by no means thoughts the scores of native laborers who had been employed within the extraction of their very own cultural and pure assets within the title of Western progress. I used to be half anticipating one among them to grab the triumphal wreath from atop Radamès’s head and cry, “That belongs in a museum!” à la Indiana Jones. This manufacturing obscures, relatively than illuminates, its context.
On this staging, Egypt can solely reclaim its previous glory by means of Western eyes; it’s colorless and lifeless earlier than they arrive. Ethiopian and Egyptian alike seem and converse by means of the fantasies of others. A number of the flattest of Verdi’s protagonists are additional flattened inside this body. Who is aware of what this Aïda is supposed to suppose or really feel? She exists solely as a projection of that girl with the pocket book, that man within the cap with a shovel. And so, who cares? What’s most irritating is that Mayer acknowledges the troubling historic dynamics swirling round this work and shrugs. He presents however doesn’t confront. In any case, how most of the Met’s main donors in all probability have a vase or figurine of iffy provenance from some far-off land and time sitting of their dwelling rooms? We are able to acknowledge the difficulty, however heaven forbid we offend anybody with the suggestion that the answer may compromise a modicum of their consolation. If the manufacturing is profitable in something, it’s in conveying a basic liberal ineptitude—what a becoming toast to 2024!
All this might need been likewise shrugged off if the night had proved musically passable. It was not.
Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
As Radamès, Piotr Beczala battled his forbidden ardour for Aïda and a nasty chilly. He succumbed to each. I can solely think about that he was desirous to keep away from withdrawing from the opening of this manufacturing, as he did with final 12 months’s New 12 months’s Eve efficiency of Carmen. Or that somebody on the Met compelled him to go on. Regardless, an ashen Peter Gelb begged the viewers for his or her understanding at intermission. “Celeste Aïda,” one of the devious entrances in opera and an endurance check even for the healthiest of tenors, was labored from the beginning, but a properly floated, if fully falsetto, B-flat at its conclusion gave the misunderstanding that Becza?a may rally because the night went on.
By the second scene, the cracks started, and he spent the remainder of the night both unsuccessfully greedy at his higher register, taking his traces down the octave, or omitting notes solely. Consequently, the closing cabaletta in his Act III duet with Aïda and the next scena practically collapsed at factors, as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the orchestra struggled to accommodate the omissions and the on-the-fly phrasing from all onstage. There was an unlucky verisimilitude to the finale: he did appear on the verge of asphyxiation. My larynx ached for him.
Judit Kutasi left a poor impression throughout her firm debut as Preziosilla in final 12 months’s La forza del destino. Her Amneris did little to vary that. Although massive, her mezzo-soprano lacks distinctive coloring and consistency throughout her register: it turns into oddly hole into higher reaches, as her vibrato spreads dangerously near a wobble. She was at her finest when spewing venom within the Act II duet, even when the prior sighs of “Vieni, amor mio” did not ravish.
If luscious phrasing isn’t her forte, then swanning in regards to the stage actually is. She carried off her kaftans with aplomb, saved her eyes narrowed in an imperial glare, caressed herself lovingly throughout her extra tender moments, and infrequently synched her gestures with orchestral thrives. The diploma to which she threw herself into the Judgement Scene practically satisfied me. She introduced a camp sensibility that the night sorely wanted, although I want the standard of her sound matched her chutzpah.
Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
That brings us to Angel Blue. The manufacturing was clearly meant to announce her as the subsequent nice American Aïda. A glamorous shot of her within the Temple of Ptah hovered over the nook of 65th and Broadway for months. Expectations had been excessive. Her efficiency was usually beautiful. Her cries of “Numi, pietà” shimmered and ached, and there was a steeliness in her heated exchanges with Amneris that emphasised her character’s regal origins. Her phrasing was clever, and her soprano ripened all through the night. Blue took “O patria mia” at a meditative tempo, permitting most of the phrases to dissolve wistfully. There was an attentiveness to the textual content as effectively, as every “mai più” took on a distinct shade: one quiet with remorse, the opposite accented with indignation.
For all these great qualities, it appeared Blue was nonetheless feeling her approach into the position. Though her soprano soared securely over the ensembles, her ascents within the extra uncovered passages had been usually tentative. The concluding A within the aria talked about above had ample spin and delicacy, but she minimize it off as quickly as she might. (Certainly, the diva could be allowed to linger slightly.) Total, it was a dignified, nice accounting of the position, however it lacked a dramatic cost that might have rendered her efficiency really thrilling. I don’t doubt that she’s going to discover her bearings and assert her presence because the run continues.
Ken Hoard/Metropolitan Opera
From his entrance, baritone Quinn Kelsey as Amonasro oozed presence. You can see the gears in his head turning as he clocked the attraction between his daughter and his captor amidst the frenzy of the Triumph. His singing was essentially the most satisfying of the night: full-bodied and full-blooded. He rendered Amanasro’s manipulative shifts between paternal tenderness and cruelty credible. Because the King, Morris Robinson displayed a gradual, authoritative bass. Like Beczala, Dmitry Belosselskiy gave the impression to be struggling by means of sickness, and his Ramfis was gravelly as a substitute of grave.
The Metropolitan Opera Refrain acquitted themselves effectively, offering the grandeur and brilliance to which the manufacturing aspired. Nézet-Séguin’s studying of the rating balanced bombast with shut consideration to texture in the course of the opera’s dance sequences. The steadiness points which have pervaded his current appearances within the pit had been much less current right here.
The Met continues its Nile cruise into Could when this long term of Aïda will make approach for the corporate premiere of John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra. The important response to that work has up to now been blended, however I’m hopeful that it’s going to not be half as inane as this debacle. Right here’s to hoping towards hope in 2025.
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