Verdi: Aida -- Royal Opera House [DVD]

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Chelsea Opera Group’s Un ballo in maschera on 22 October opened their 2023-24 London season (10/10/2023) 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. The autumn season of Jamiel Devernay-Laurence’s Ballet Nights reaches its Grande Finale (26/11/2023) Mezzo-Sopranos Maria Brown, Siobhain Gibson, Zoë Haydn, Maria Jones, Clare McCaldin, Hyacinth Nicholls, Dervla Ramsay, Jennifer Westwood

Insula’s Sky Burial at the Barbican is a stunning evening, unique, and vitally important (22/11/2023) Sadly, due to a family illness, Angel Blue is unable to perform the role of Aida on 23, 27 May and 1 June. She will be replaced by Christina Nilsson.But just listen to the first few bars of that overture. Where he might have opened with the sort of military pomp that comes later, Verdi spins a single gossamer line. Lives hang by a thread in this opera. A whisper, overheard, and not a shout, can change everything when love and duty collide.

The Radames of SeokJong Baek was ringing and resonant, though Verdi’s two-dimensional character remained flat. As Aida, the American soprano Angel Blue was at times uneven vocally, but her natural, compelling stage presence won out. Reprising their roles. Ludovic Tézier showed pain and anger as Aida’s father, Amonasro, and Soloman Howard was calm and masterly as Ramfis, The ROH chorus (directed by William Spaulding) showed their world-class skill. 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?ON’s Masque of Might with its message of impending environmental catastrophe has a significant impact (21/11/2023) 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. Dancers Bradley Applewhaite, Eamonn Cox, Nolan Edwards, Cameron Everitt, Tristan Ghostkeeper, Martin Harding, Vincent Merouze, Chris Otim, Anthony Pereira, Dominic Rocca, Trevor Schoonraad 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. Ferocity and heartbreak’: Elīna Garanča, right, as Amneris, with Angel Blue in the title role, in the Royal Opera’s Aida. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

Elīna Garanča delivered a show-stealing Amneris, returning to Covent Garden after her thrilling vocal partnership with SeokJong Baek in Richard Jones’ uneven “Samson et Dalila” last season. Her Act four melt-down was electrifying; her top notes are as bronzed as ever – a fine complement to Angel Blue’s more steely sound. Her middle and lower register, especially in the Act two duet with Aida, had a kind of wounded gravitas; it is a rounded and hugely involving portrayal. 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. Plenty of opportunities for the Chorus of the Royal Opera House to shine in this grand spectacle, which they did (notwithstanding a temporary disagreement with Elder about tempo in Act two, which will presumably iron itself out). Nothing is more exciting than quiet singing – the Act one scene in the temple saw superlative, feather-soft singing from the men of the chorus, the sound veiled and blooming. It was an unearthly moment of beauty that hinted at some residual humanity hidden behind the bellicose world of the opera. 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.

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Elder statesman steps in to conduct a majestic Mahler’s Third with the LPO at the Royal Festival Hall (27/11/2023) In her drab beige pinafore, by contrast, it is through the gleaming soprano voice of Russia soprano Elena Stikhina that Aida shines. Her musical phrasing and utmost control is all the colour she needs to make a big impression. Photography and filming are prohibited during performances in any of our auditoriums. You are welcome to take pictures throughout the rest of the building and before performances and share them with us through social media. Commercial photography and filming must be agreed in advance with our press team. 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. Love across the divide comes in the form of an illicit relationship between an Egyptian officer, Radames, and the daughter of his enemy’s leader, the Aida of the title. Radames is also pursued by his ruler’s daughter, whose hand he is offered in exchange for good service.

Golden-toned: Francesco Meli as Radames, with Elena Stikhina as Aida. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian The artist who represents his country and his time becomes necessarily universal in the present and in the future.’ So Verdi wrote to the Neapolitan painter Domenico Morelli on 27 th February 1871. One hundred and fifty years later, while not everything in this production comes off, Robert Carsen’s Aida might be said to illuminate the rightness of the composer’s words. Sopranos Angela Caesar, Celeste Gattai, Kathryn Jenkin, Bernadette Lord, Alison Rayner, Anna Samant, Rosalind Waters, Vanessa Woodfine