Verdi: Aida -- Royal Opera House [DVD]

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Aïda is an opera of two very distinct halves, the first filled with anxious optimism, love, disappointment, victory, defeat, suffering, suspicion, reward and triumphant marches. It gives a director such as Carsen (and given the sheer number of bodies required to create the spectacle, the chorus director William Spaulding) much to work with, and much work to do, both from the perspective of actors’ performance and visual placement. Here, the overtly military focus has given rise to a set where palaces/bunkers are of concrete grey and costumes predominantly of camouflage green hues, both benefiting from dramatic red accents which are visually arresting, stunning (and thankfully devoid of the hideous gold trappings much favoured in such Middle Eastern locations). For the first time ever, two opening nightlive broadcasts – Mayerlingand The Royal Ballet: A Diamond Celebration

Mark Elder, conducting, seems to have Verdi pumping through his veins. This was his night. He steered the epic moments as well as the subtle, spare scoring of the intimate passages, every moment steeped in maximum drama. Aida devotees will rail against the production – not generally liked much when it was new – and the liberties taken with the plot (I don’t remember Verdi specifying a table-laying scene). But Carsen’s interpretation gives the characters definition and clarity. As one who has always struggled with this work, I found it illuminating. In many ways, Aida is bound up with contemporary history, however. When Ismail Pasha, the new Viceroy of Egypt, arrived in Paris to represent his country at the Exposition universelle in June 1867, the Egyptian pavilion that he had erected on a large corner of the Champs de Mars – featuring, among myriad things, a pharaoh’s temple, a modern-day bazaar, and a panorama of the Isthmus of Suez created by the Suez Canal company – was described by one French commentator as ‘a living Egypt, a picturesque Egypt, the Egypt of Ismail Pasha’. His lavish spectacle was almost certainly designed to present Egypt as a major player on the modern world stage, and this idea also lay behind his commission, two years later, of Verdi’s Aida, which was to be performed in Cairo’s first opera house, positioned beside the recently opened Suez Canal. Carsen’s wish to show the destruction of the individual by the apparatus of the state is powerfully fulfilled by the three principals. Francesco Meli is an upright, proud Radamès, very much a man of patriotism and integrity, but convincingly humbled by love. His tenor reached strongly to the top, but sometimes without nuance, though he paced his performance effectively. As Aida, Elena Stikhina gave an astonishingly insightful portrait of emotional suffering and inner conflict. This was not a showy performance, and at first I wondered if her soprano would rise above the resounding orchestral forces, but she saved her vocal intensity for the latter stages of the opera where it made a tremendously affecting impression. Rarely has torment and anguish sounded so sweet. Agnieszka Rehlis’s Amneris transformed persuasively from a spoilt, contemptuous schemer to a woman rent apart by despair when her pleading with the priests fails to save Radamès from his fate. This reviewer just wishes (for the entire company’s sake) that Verdi had not written the second half. For any optimist and even most romantics, it is simply an excrutiating hour of misery, blame, recrimination and human stupidity. There are few redeeming moments and the final tomb scene — which here is actually an underground bomb storage depot — is one of the most foolishly morose to ever feature in the work of a genius as notable and loved as Guiseppe Verdi, (so we must lay the blame squarely at the feet of his librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni).

In this, his penultimate annual season at Covent Garden before moving to the London Symphony Orchestra, it is tempting to reach out and beg him to stay. Drawing stirring ensemble playing and intimate solos from the orchestra, he is also superbly served by the strong and immaculate chorus, always on parade or on manoeuvres and rejoicing in violence, even as interpreted in dance by choreographer Rebecca Howell.Egypt is at war with Ethiopia. Aida, daughter of the Ethiopian King Amonasro, has been captured and made prisoner. She now serves Amneris, the Egyptian King’s daughter, but Aida has concealed her true identity. The chorus’s precision, and the exciting fortissimos and whispers this work demands, made them the stars Aida – Elena Stikhina, Radamès – Francesco Meli, Amneris – Agnieszka Rehlis, Amonasro – Ludovic Tézier, Ramfis – Soloman Howard, King of Egypt – In Sung Sim, High Priestess – Francesca Chiejina, Messenger – Andrés Presno; Director – Robert Carsen, Conductor – Sir Antonio Pappano, Set Designer – Miriam Buether, Costume Designer – Annemarie Woods, Lighting Designers – Robert Carsen and Peter van Praet, Choreographer – Rebecca Howell, Video Designer – Duncan McLean, Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House. Cast: Elena Stikhina(Aida), Francesco Meli(Radames), Agnieszka Rehlis(Amneris), Ludovic Tézier(Amonasro), Soloman Howard(Ramfis), In Sung Sim(King of Egypt) If colour was absent from the stage, then there was plenty of it in the pit where Antonio Pappano mined all the subtleties of the score, from the most delicate string sound to the heights of orchestral opulence. Time and again, the sensitivity of his reading brought balance, and human warmth, to the grim austerity of the design and the tragic tone of the drama. To take just one moment, Aida’s wrenching mourning after she has been condemned by her father: here, the soft darkness of the lower strings and bassoon wonderfully underscored Aida’s desolation and the pathos of her lament.

Mark Elder brought a masterful sound out of the house orchestra, using Verdi’s innovative orchestration to create a fresh soundworld for every scene. Tension and terror alongside triumph and tender love were all convincingly carried by the orchestra, heightening the drama. Vedi’s fiendish and exposed woodwind moments sounded gorgeous, as were Concertmaster Sergey Levitin’s solos. ROH’s Aida is a fresh take on the score’s perennial themes of love, power and war and is well worth a visit. There’s an enduring story that the premiere of Verdi’s Aida featured a dozen elephants in Act 2’s triumphal procession. Disappointingly that’s a myth, but there’s at least one of them still lurking in the room now whenever an opera company takes on the work, one that gets bigger and wrinklier with the years: how to stage today an “exotic” story of Egypt and Ethiopia, seen through 19th-century Italian eyes? Ramfis ( Solomon Howard) who is ordinarily a High Priest, here appears as an intimidating senior military attaché whilst the rest of the junta wouldn’t have appeared out-of-place in Mubarak’s Egypt. When he presents the General with the icon which will lead Egypt to victory in battle, here it manifests as a Kalashnikov assault rifle. Tightly choreographed set pieces involve the enormous chorus and dancers who have been drilled into a marching/fighting machine equal to any found on an equivalent parade ground or battlefield. Aside from the assault rifle distribution scene, the 2 other notable unsung orchestral interludes give rise to an inspection of the guard by the king and the laying of the victory banquet table. Both are inspired choices and add considerably to the audience’s enjoyment — if only due to the excited nervousness which comes from anticipating whether every chorus member will have managed to reach his/her designated place by the last note. Ramfis and his acolytes are no longer mystics but senior military staff. The temple – spare wooden benches and gray walls like one of Le Corbusier’s chapels – has no religious iconography that motivates this society’s military purpose, save a few flags. It is war, duty, sacrifice themselves that are sacralized, as the chorus hold their assault rifles aloft as if divinely blessed. The sets are shaped so as to feel both claustrophobic and imposing. Amonasro, leader of the Ethiopians, is cast in Act three as a paramilitary guerrilla, as if to suggest myriad recent contemporary global insurgent wars, though his ruthlessness with Aida suggests doesn’t prompt us to feel that much sympathy for the wretched of the earth. Insula’s Sky Burial at the Barbican is a stunning evening, unique, and vitally important (22/11/2023)

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CALLAS – PARIS, 1958 in cinemas soon should not be missed by opera lovers of whatever vintage (06/11/2023) But the whole was so much more than the sum of its parts thanks to Elder’s sure direction, delivering real, spine-tingling grandeur in the choral scenes while balancing chorus and orchestra impeccably. We are delighted to share details of the brand-new Cinema Season from The Royal Opera House.The 2022-23 season will be the biggest season yet with 13 world-classproductions– seven operas and six ballets.