Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
Verdi’s love triangle extravaganza was broadcast today (Oct 24, 2009) live throughout the known world in HD. This performance was one of the series most successful. The singing and orchestral playing were responsible for the emotional energy that flowed from the 1109th performance by the Met of an opera which everyone knows, but which requires great voices and a great orchestra to succeed.
Violeta Urmana – Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana made her Met debut in 2001 as Kundry in Parsifal. She then sang Eboli (a mezzo role) in Verdi’s Don Carlo. She is now a full time soprano. She’s currently alternating Isolde with Aida at different venues. She has an edgy voice that occasionally is shrill in its high register. Nevertheless, she managed to float some lovely high notes though there’s a break in her voice when she makes the transition from loud to soft. If Zinka Milanov was the ultimate Aida and Leontyne Price was the next level down, Urmana is one further stage below, but she still is very good.
Johan Botha – Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
Tenor Johan Botha was about as good as you can get as Radames. A heldentenor his voice is the same type and quality as was Ben Heppner’s before Otello knocked him out. Botha has survived that test having negotiated a run of Otello’s at the Met (as well as elsewhere) last season. He has a large and smoothly produced sound which he can modulate easily. His solution to the high B-flat at the end of “Celeste Aida” was to hit the note full voice and then to take a diminuendo which was effective without being spectacular. His singing thereafter was full voiced and nuanced. At 44 he’s got the heavy Verdi and Wagner roles to himself if he’s able to maintain his current level for a while.
Dolora Zajick – Photo: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera
Delora Zajick has been the queen of the Verdi mezzos for the past 20 years. She’s still unrivaled. She did everything during the Judgment Scene except detonate a hydrogen bomb. Beautiful sound, ringing high notes, and enough volume to jump start the hearing aid business, opera lovers will be talking about her for generations.
Carlo Guelfi’s baritone was tired and not bright. A journeyman performance at best. Roberto Scandiuzzi had a woolly sound that’s not particularly appealing. Amazingly, Adam Laurence Herskowitz was stressed by the Messenger’s brief appearance. Stefan Kocán did little with the thankless role of the King.
Daniele Gatti conducted well though I think the Met’s orchestra could do the opera just about as well as it did without a conductor. Gatti failed the tympani test in Act 2. Near the beginning of his solo Amonasro sings “Morte invan cercai (Death I vainly sought). This line is immediately punctuated by a thud on the drum that emphasizes the starkness of what he’s saying. This note should strike like a thunderbolt. Instead we got a hiccup. Any real Verdi conductor should understand what’s needed here.
Donald Palumbo’s chorus, as is the norm, was brilliant. Verdi’s management of large forces is beyond praise. When Aida get’s a chorus and orchestra of the very first rank an audience can understand why Benjamin Britten thought that Verdi in his later works had discovered the secret of perfection. It’s easy to take this war horse, chestnut, bromide, old saw, etc for granted given the usual pedestrian performance that’s usually encountered. But when you get great singers on a great stage the unique genius that conjured this work glows like a blue diamond.
The Met’s staging of Aida is more than 20years old, but it still looks great. The house’s super-sized stage is perfect for the opera’s epic scenes. The staging was suitably scaled for the piece’s intimate conclusion. Alexei Ratmansky was brought in to redo the choreography. The result was interesting and appealing but one doesn’t go to Aida for the dancing.
Not only were the opera’s great climaxes realized, but it’s poignant and gentle ending was just as well done. An outstanding performance. Just one final note. The three protagonists, especially Botha, were animated ads for the metabolic syndrome. I fear for their continued good health absent a dietary readjustment.
The review of the 2012 telecast is here.
For the most part I agree with your review but I was struck by the seeming lack of emotion on the part of everyone. Zajick rants and raves but I didn’t feel that she meant it for a second. Same for the others except perhaps Guelfi, but as you said, he was so ragged vocally that it would help.
Indeed it was a nice production, but for me “Aida: is all about voices, which is why the Met seems to have forgotten their recent decisions on cast for appearance.
I, too, thought Zajick,a little ranting. While her voice was exquisite, her acting lacked conviction and passion. Her movements up and down stage when pleading for Radames, distracted me from listening to her voice.
The dancing was very lovely. Though we might not go to se an opera for the dancing, what a pleasing surprise!
I think considering the circumstances, the dancing was a relief from general boring performance. As for coming to see the opera for the dancing, surely it’s the case in some operatic traditions (including the actual circumstances of Aida’s commission and we all know that French liked their operas with dancing.
“we all know that French liked their operas with dancing.”
I understood it was the king who demanded ballets inserted into operas as he liked to see lots of ladies legs.
Verdi wrote Aida for the Cairo Opera House. Shortly after its Egyptian premiere it was performed at La Scala. Verdi clearly wanted the two ballet numbers to be part of show. He wrote ballets for all his operas that were commissioned by the Paris Opera. These are often omitted when the French (or Italian) versions are performed in an other country. He also wrote ballet music for the French performances of Macbeth, Il Trovatore, and Otello. These are never done outside of France.
A good performance of the ballets in Aida is nice. But a bad one can be ignored if the rest of the production is up to par. Nobody was terribly upset by Zachary Solov’s pedestrian choreography when Milanov and Del Monaco headed the bill at the Met in the 50s.
Nice review. But I was actually quite disappointed with the singing, which, with a few momentary exceptions, seemed overall quite wooden and indifferent. I had the sense that none of the singers was really invested in their parts or in the music. Just another night on the job. Perhaps there was an issue with the chemistry among the cast members. And even understanding that these are not actors — and so we need to keep our expectations in check — personal expression still matters. All, again, with momentary exceptions, seemed uncertain how to physically express the meaning of what they were singing. If you compare this performance, for example, with the 1989 Met performacnce available on DVD featuring Millo, Domingo, Zajick, Milnes, et al, this performance seems like a mere shell of that earlier one.
I was at that performance. Two things stick in my mind about it. The first was Delora Zajick’s performance and the second was the fire. In the second scene of the first act a part of the scenery on the extreme right (the audience’s) caught fire. A stage hand carrying a fire extinguisher crept onstage and snuffed out the conflagration. In the grand tradition of the theater the show went on without missing a beat.
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