Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✩
written by Giuseppe Verdi, directed by Tim Albery
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
October 2-November 5, 2010
The magnificent performance of Sondra Radvanovsky in the title role is prime reason to see the COC’s new production of Verdi’s Aida. She has a dark, passionate soprano capable of exquisitely floated high notes. She not only inhabits her role completely but validates director Tim Albery’s completely de-glamorized vision Aida as a captive in a hostile country. The production itself is a mixture of plusses and minuses, but Radvanovsky is the plus that silences all objections. (Michele Capalbo takes over the role from Oct. 21 to Nov. 5.)
Albery has moved the action of the fictional tale from ancient Egypt sometime during the 3rd millennium BC, to the present in an unnamed, newly wealthy, ultra-nationalistic state. Hildegard Bechtler’s stark designs for the royal palace look more like various public, private and conference rooms of an anonymous luxury hotel. Anyone hoping for distant vistas of the Pyramids, the Sphinx, much less of live elephants, will be disappointed. Others will see that Albery has swept away all the bric-a-brac of Orientalism in order to focus on the work’s powerful drama that makes it uncannily relevant. The wealthy “Egyptians” have conquered the less wealthy “Ethiopians” and made them their servants. Since Aida has never revealed that she is royal, she is treated like all the other captive women and works as cleaning staff. Radames (a muffled-sounding Rosario La Spina), the Egyptians’ great hero, has nevertheless fallen in love with her despite her nationality and low status. This drives Amneris (a powerful Jill Grove), the Egyptian king’s daughter, to a vengeful fury. Removing the story from its “Egyptian” context reveals it as a variation on Romeo and Juliet, where the two lovers are literally suffocated by a divided world intent on unending war.
Unfortunately, the design often goes too far. There’s no value in satirizing Amneris as a shoe-obsessed Imelda Marcos. Turning temple priestesses into golden chain-mail-clad showgirls is tacky and inappropriate to the context. Changing the famous Triumphal March into a dream sequence for Aida is ill-conceived and hits us over the head with an allegorical scene of death-heads mating with skeletons. If Aida goes to die with her lover Radames in his tomb, why do they stay 12 feet apart? All these flaws are easily fixable and stand out because Albery’s vision is otherwise so clear-sighted. Musically, the orchestra under Johannes Debus and the COC chorus are simply thrilling. In fact, the very plainness of the sets serves as a foil for the splendour of the music reminding us that great yearnings animate ordinary people as much or more than exotic kings and queens.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-10-05.
Photo: Sonya Radvanovsky. ©Michael Cooper.
2010-10-05
Aida