The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (44 page)

CD: Montserrat Caballé (Elisabetta); Placido Domingo (Carlo); Carlo Maria Giulini (cond.).
EMI 567 401 2.
Italian version

CD, video and DVD: Karita Mattila (Elisabeth); Thomas Hampson (Posa); Antonio Pappano (cond.).
Directed by Luc Bondy.
French version.
EMI 4243 5 56152 2 (CD); EMI 0630 163 183 (video); and BBC NVC Arts 0630 16318 2 (DVD)

Aida

Four acts. First performed Cairo, 1871.

Libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni

In 1869, Verdi was asked by the Khedive of Egypt to inaugurate a new opera house being built in Cairo as part of the celebrations surrounding the completion of the Suez Canal in 1870.
Verdi failed to finish the score by the deadline and the Franco-Prussian war prevented the scenery being transported out of Paris, so the Cairo Opera House opened with
Rigoletto.
Aida
eventually received its première there on Christmas Eve 1871.

Verdi took meticulous care to furnish correct archaeological detail for the libretto, and this may be one reason why it seems rather stiff and conservative – this is a piece with roots in the outdated conventions of French grand opera and eighteenth-century
opera
seria.
From a musical point of view, however, the score ranks as a technical marvel – remarkably original in its orchestration, well-nigh perfect in terms of balance, proportion and clarity – as well as a treasure-trove of melody and dramatic master-strokes.

Plot

Ancient Memphis.
The warrior Radames secretly loves Aida, a beautiful Ethiopian captive who has been made slave to the
King of Egypt’s daughter, Amneris.
He does not know that Aida is the daughter of the King of Ethiopia or that Amneris herself is in love with him.
War is declared against the resurgent Ethiopians and Radames is named commander of the Egyptian army.
As he is sent off to fight her compatriots, Aida is torn between loyalty to her homeland and love for Radames.

Amneris goads Aida into confessing the truth about her relationship with Radames and then reveals that she, too, loves him.
Radames returns from the war in triumph and is acclaimed by the populace.
Among the prisoners is Aida’s father Amonasro, unrecognized as the King of Ethiopia.
As a reward for his military success, Radames is given Amneris as his bride – an offer he cannot refuse.

Aida awaits a secret final meeting with Radames at night by the banks of the Nile.
Amonasro has guessed her feelings for the Egyptian general.
Outraged, he plays on her sense of patriotism and persuades her to wheedle some crucial military intelligence out of Radames.
Reluctandy, Aida consents.
Amonasro hides, as Radames arrives and protests that he still loves Aida alone.
As they plan to flee to Ethiopia together, Radames unwittingly reveals the military information which Amonasro requires to ambush the army.
But from another hiding place, Amneris and the High Priest Ramfis have also been listening.
Aida and Amonasro escape, but Radames is arrested as a traitor.

Radames is tried by Ramfis and the priests.
Outside the court, Amneris paces up and down, torn between thwarted love and the desire for revenge.
Amonasro has been killed, but Radames refuses to denounce Aida and the court condemns him to be buried alive in the temple crypt.
Aida finds her way into his tomb and they die together, as a repentant Amneris kneels in remorseful prayer above them.

What to listen for

An opera which poses singers a variety of problems.
For Aida herself, these are focused on the sustained high C, marked
‘dolce’
at the climax of her aria which opens the Nile scene.
Because there is so little support from the orchestra, and because of the ascent which precedes it, the note is horribly difficult to achieve, and many otherwise qualified sopranos avoid the role entirely because they are so frightened of flunking it.
Like Leonora in
Forza,
Aida is a Verdi role which makes great play of the contrast between
piano
and
forte
singing, and those who simply belt it out can never do it justice.

Amneris is written for a high mezzo-soprano similar to Eboli in
Don
Carlos.
Unusually, the role involves no set-piece aria, though the dramatic declamation in the scene in which she awaits the verdict of Radames’s trial for treason is a tremendous
tour
de force
for any singer with a stentorian chest voice and an Olympic level of stamina.
Radames confronts his biggest hurdle in the first minutes of the opera, when his aria ‘Celeste Aida’ ends with a top B flat which is meant to die away pianissimo.
Very few heroic tenors can even approximate this, and almost everybody simply hits the note fortissimo, destroying a beautiful musical effect.

Like several other Verdi operas (
Il
Trovatore,
for instance),
Aida
has a reputation for being a rousing blockbuster.
But it is also a score of remarkable refinement and delicacy – note the sinuous oriental colourings and the bright-toned pseudo-Ancient Egyptian idiom of the dance and processional music; the enthralling development of the duet between Aida and Amneris; the masterly construction of the Nile scene, with the simplicity of its exquisite orchestral evocation of the atmosphere; and the final duet for Aida and Radames, in which the shortness of the phrases brilliantly suggests their struggle for breath.
The famous Triumph Scene contains a great deal of strong melody and martial splendour; it is much more convincing than the similar
auto-da-fé
scene in
Don
Carlos,
and exemplifies Verdi’s mastery of large-scale theatricality, building climax upon climax.

In performance

Despite being celebrated as opera’s equivalent of a Hollywood blockbuster and often presented on vast arena or open-air stages (notably in Verona and Luxor),
Aida,
like
Don
Carlos,
is focused on human relationships at the mercy of public conflicts, even though neither the characterization nor the political perspective is anything like as subtle as it is in
Don
Carlos.

The Ancient Egyptian setting is impossible to represent without lapsing into kitsch, though audiences continue to want this opera to look like a fifties biblical epic starring Charlton Heston and Gina Lollobrigida (who did indeed play Aida in a dubbed film version).
An elegant solution was provided by Philip Prowse for Opera North, when his handsome staging updated the action to the time of the opera’s composition and a time of dubious colonial adventurism.
More controversially, a production in Frankfurt directed by Hans Neuenfels had the dancers in the Triumph Scene making Nazi goose-steps and salutes, with the chorus of Egyptians presented as a bourgeois opera audience applauding from tiers of boxes.
The idea that the Egyptians represent an aggressive Fascist power (redolent of Mussolini and his Abyssinian expedition) has become a commonplace.

Recording

CD: Montserrat Caballé (Aida); Placido Domingo (Radames); Riccardo Muti (cond.).
EMI 5676 13 2

Otello

Four acts. First performed Milan, 1887.

Libretto by Arrigo Boito

Verdi’s trust in the highly intellectual and cultivated librettist and composer Arrigo Boito had consolidated when Boito
helped him revise
Simon
Boccanegra
in 1881.
Their rapport inspired Verdi to return to Shakespeare for what would be his first new opera for over fifteen years and a work of masterful technical polish and theatrical grandeur.

Plot

Broadly the same as Shakespeare’s play, omitting its initial Venetian scenes, and opening with the citizens of Cyprus anxiously watching the sea as Otello fights off the invading Turkish navy.

What to listen for

Verdi was thought to be very old-fashioned at the time of
Otello
’s composition, but the score showed his critics how wrong they were.
Although there are grand-opera elements (such as the big ensemble finale to Act III), the score also displays the influence of Wagner in its use of motifs and the technique of ‘through-composition’, in which the drama proceeds without any obvious breaks or division into separate numbers.