![]() Verdi gives Aida some of the opera’s most delicate, melodic moments every fear, frustration and outburst of love registered in Carosi’s voice, face, body. Her voice wasn’t only luminous she was alive in the role. ![]() As Aida, she out-sang everybody during the first half, including the chorus. One wonders, with so much back-history, why this “Aida” is so out of whack, and why more focus hasn’t been put where it belongs: on the singing and the drama.įor a while Friday, it looked like Italian soprano Micaela Carosi, making her San Francisco debut, was going to steal the show and carry the whole thing on her shoulders. Both of those companies have already staged it. That is what gets papered over in this production - actually a co-production with Houston Grand Opera and English National Opera. But it’s also about stifled passion, the secret love affair of Radames and Aida, the Ethiopian princess who’s been taken slave by the Egyptians. Yes, “Aida” by definition is about spectacle: trumpets, processions, memorable military marches. We’re given a corporate view of fun and beauty: The high-fashion veneer blocks out the inherent drama and emotion of “Aida” in this staging, directed by Jo Davies with production design by British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. But the production feels cold and, for all the effort, bland. It’s gorgeous and lavish and outrageously decorated - like staring into a tropical fish tank for 21/2 hours - and perhaps it is ultimately linked to the woo-woo mysticism of Verdi’s pharaonic imaginings. It plays like an obsessive visual campaign for hearts and minds, as if someone has decided that seats won’t be filled without a blast of Cirque du Soleil and sexy intimations of movie magic.Īnd so Radames, the Egyptian general, rides in on a blue-winged puppet-elephant, a billowy pastel giant out of “Avatar.” And the royal palace of ancient Memphis, with all its bustling activities - acrobats, dancers and an army of bare-chested priests marching around in floor-length Hawaiian hula skirts of golden tulle - resembles a New Age samba fete in Monterey. And that’s the heart of the problem with SFO’s production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida,” which opened Friday at War Memorial Opera House to launch the 2010-11 season. It’s what fans have come to expect, especially from big-budget companies such as San Francisco Opera.īut it shouldn’t only be a spectacle. SAN FRANCISCO - Opera should, or can, be a spectacle.
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