Paris Opera (live stream), 18/02/2021

 Verdi : Aida

Chorus and Orchestra of the Opéra de Paris

Michele Mariotti

While I have no particular hankering after elephants, and certainly think that other solutions need to be found for blackface, if casting white singers as the Ethiopian princess and king, I don't think Lotte de Beer's new production for the Paris Opera has really cracked it either.  Set in a museum, around the period of composition, there are plenty of nods towards the West's, and specifically France's, colonial past, which is hardly unexpected.  The setting isn't all that odd either, it's been done before - I can think of at least two I've seen in the last five or six years, another Verdi and a Rossini.  

Where de Beer has done something strange is to replace Aida and Amonasro with puppets, segments hewn from what looks like lava rock, dark, porous and streaked, the Aida puppet about adolescent-sized, manipulated by three handlers, the Amonasro one, an upper body only, but full size, with two handlers.  The actual singers, Sondra Radvanovsky and Ludovic Tézier, hover around the puppet teams, sometimes seeming to address the puppet, sometimes whichever party the puppet is acting towards.  It's a way of avoiding the ethnicity issue, the puppets are carved to give a vague impression of "primitive" African-inspired art, but for a show that is televised, close-ups merely reinforce the inexpressivity of the faces. Of the two, it's actually the Amonasro puppet that works the better, for me, that has more presence.  That both Radvanovsky and Tézier remain as vocally expressive as they do, relegated to the background as they more or less are, is a tribute to their craft.  

Against this, you have an Amneris who looks like a fondant fancy in a vulgar pink satin dress, and Jonas Kaufmann's Radamès who frequently (especially in the Triumphal March) looks like he feels like a prize idiot, and he's not far wrong either.  (I don't think I've seen Kaufmann completely clean shaven in years, it's actually a little odd.) That said, the Triumphal March itself was kind of fun; it was staged as a series of tableaux vivants, ranging widely over the centuries, with images of Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt, of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Revolution and, rather incongruously, the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima.  It was all set up in real time, you saw the set and costume changes, extras ran around half-dressed trying to fit together pieces of horse statues, scrambling into the rest of their costumes before taking position as corpses on the battlefield, and the last tableau was Radamès, looking desperately uncomfortable, being crowned victor by Amneris playing the goddess Nike.  It was comical and bizarre, and sort of ridiculously enjoyable.  

Ksenia Dudnikova (Amneris) and Jonas Kaufmann (Radamès)
Act 2, Aida (© Paris Opera, 2021)

The second half of the evening had a stronger emotional component, the Nile act confrontation between father and daughter worked quite well between the puppets, Ksenia Dudnikova's Amneris stopped looking like an over-decorated cake and became a real person, while the final scene was particularly striking.  Instead of Radamès being alone in a sealed underground crypt with just the living Aida, here, the crypt was full of the corpses (puppet bodies) of the defeated Ethiopians, and at the end, as their duet fades into nothing, he lies down with the puppet Aida, while Radvanovsky silently and slowly disappears into the shadows at the rear of the stage.  The final impression of the evening, in terms of the production, is therefore fairly positive.

Musically, though, we were pretty much looking at a dream team.  Kaufmann's "Celeste Aida" was a bit tight, and there was just a hint of roughness in the voice at moments, but it passed, and by Act 3, and above all Act 4 he was in fine form, his celebrated dynamic range deployed in full force and flexibility, concluding with an ethereal "O terra audio".  Sondra Radvanovsky was a magnificent Aida, poignant and warm, her voice lustrous and stirring, and matching Kaufmann perfectly in that final duo.  Ksenia Dudnikova was pretty well pushed to the limits of her vocal strength in Amneris's big Act 4 scene, but gave it appropriate ferocity.  And when you have a baritone of the calibre of Ludovic Tézier to sing Amonasro, it seems a pity the role is so small, but he certainly made his presence felt, in all the right ways.   The chorus, despite singing with masks on (which is a new one on me, but it seemed quite successful), made a good showing, while the orchestra under Mariotti was excellent, with special mention to the oboe solo in the Nile aria, which was particularly beautifully played.  While the production, visually, was not a total loss, this was certainly an evening where you could close your eyes and truly enjoy the music.