Review: AIDA (Opera Queensland) Opening Night, Lyric Theatre 16 October 2010

If you think of opera as a theatre of bold archetypes, Aida is probably near the top of your list of greats. Love and war, slaves and kings, soldiers and the women who wait for them – you could hardly ask for more primal subject matter.

The plot is primal too, a tragic love triangle: warrior Radamès remains tormented throughout by his forbidden love for Aida (the titular captive princess) and the jealousy of Amneris (her royal mistress). The broader canvas on which this personal drama plays out is one of confict on an imperial scale, between the Egypt of the Pharoahs and a quasi-mythical Ethiopia.

So from the outset Aida is both primal and BIG with a capital everything. Responding to this potent dramatic concoction, Verdi achieved the greatest public success of his career with a powerhouse score that climaxes with the celebrated Triumphal March ringing the curtain down on Act II.

So well does the opera succeed in its grand vision, however, that it has become almost a cliché to observe that any mounting of Aida risks suffocating the drama under the sheer mass of its own splendour. (You don’t want Radamès’ airtight imprisonment beneath the Great Pyramid to come off as an unfortunate metaphor for the evening as a whole.)

Happily, Graeme Murphy’s production, presented here under the able direction of Shane Placentino, sustains the theatrical pace in many ways. As you’d expect from a dance-orientated director, there is great fluidity of movement onstage, encompassing slave dancers aplenty and abundant use of gliding floor panels. To this is added the play of light and projected imaging courtesy of the Brothers Gruchy, while Roger Kirk’s set and costume designs contrive to be both lavish and elemental. The gaudy grandeur of Egypt is distilled down to virtually just three colours: black, white and gold.

Aida has a fascinating performance history with multiple political dimensions. According to legend, the great African-American soprano Leontyne Price refused to debut as the heroine role for the Metropolitan Opera, on the grounds that she did not want to make her first New York appearance in the guise of a slave. Here in Australia, current political correctness prohibits performers appearing blackface, so this Aida features the whitest Ethiopians you’ll ever see. To its credit, though, the production does all that can be done with kaftans and dreadlocks to suggest the ethnicity of the non-Egyptian characters.

Nevertheless, in character terms, what matters in opera above all is the singing, which in this case is uniformly accomplished.

Julian Gavin’s robust, rounded tenor impresses from the outset, automatically embodying Radamès heroic spirit. (It takes a brave man to conquer Celeste Aida with only a few recit phrases to warm up on.) Zara Barrett, debuting in the title role, deploys an appropriately plaintive timbral palette, but also has the power needed to project
above the orchestra at crisis points.

It is also a true pleasure to hear the magisterial bass of Alexey Tikhomirov as high priest Ramfis, while Ian Vayne, as the captured but unvanquished king Amonasro, brings an aptly raw physical presence to the one character in the piece who controls his own destiny.

As Amneris, Milijana Nikolic exhibits a rich mezzo that swells to considerable power for the opera’s final phase. Her acting is very effective too, revealing the character as something of a Joan Crawford prototype as she realises too late that bitchery won’t get her the man she craves.

For me, however, the most revelatory moment of the evening came at the beginning of the third Act. This is, after all, where the decisive action takes place, the betrayals and unmaskings which lead to the final tragedy. To open the scene Verdi excelled himself while showing how truly avant-garde a composer he was, conjuring up Night on the Nile from deft pizzicato strings and a burbling flute solo that looks as far forward as Ravel. It was a great inspiration of Murphy’s to marry this to a pas de deux for an anonymous, innocently trysting young couple. So delicately did it underscore the strange quirk of Verdi’s musical psyche – you find it also in Otello’s Willow Song – that sensuality only seeps through when there’s a bit of Death in the air…

AIDA plays at the Lyric Theatre until 30 October.