Review: AIDA, Royal Ballet and Opera

Already this year, I’ve thought much on the nature of theatrical revivals and adaptations. 

At The Kiln, The Lonely Londoners source novel was written in 1956, but Roy Williams’ marvellous adaptation is informed by what we now know of The Windrush Generation’s appalling treatment by the State - as, of course, is our reception of the play. In Jermyn Street, Jean Genet’s masterpiece, The Maids, dates from a little earlier, but can now only be seen through the prism of modern slavery. At Shakespeare’s Globe, Cymbeline uses gender-blind casting in a play in which cross-dressing is critical to the plot - does that decision enlighten or confuse an already complicated narrative?

At the Royal Ballet and Opera, the issue is doubled. Gone are the pyramids and Tutankamun call-backs and in comes sets (by Miriam Buether) that reminded me of the interiors Bernardo Bertolucci used in The Conformist. Egypt is missing (except, awkwardly, in the libretto), replaced by a nameless state that draws on the militaristic iconography of the USA, Russia and China. 

The doubling up comes of the fact that I saw this production on its debut in 2022, a world without a hot war in Europe or a sustained campaign in Gaza. If Aida was always a guilty pleasure, indulging in the kind of faux Orientalism Edward Said abhorred, Robert Carsen’s vision has invited the charge that 21st century weaponry’s capacity to cause death and destruction on an unimaginable scale is secondary to a love triangle in its dramatic punch. 

Three years ago, one could set that argument aside and, perhaps, such considerations are best left for an evening sharing a bottle or two of red after the clock ticks past midnight. In a university hall of residence.

Back with the doomed lovers and the woman scorned, we just about engage with their trauma in these vast sepulchral halls, but it’s as tough a job on the acting side of the gig as it is on the singing to convince us to do so. 

Jorge De León (a late replacement for Riccardo Massi) has everything dialled up to ten from the outset, his tenor filling the house which makes the silence that seals his fate all the more affecting. Does De León’s approach leave any room for doubt in Radames’s decisions that lead to his demise? I think not, but surely it should, as the man is a successful general who must understand strategy? His is a bad one for everyone.

In the titular role, Anna Pirozzi brings many years of experience to bear and piles the emotions into both her solo arias and duets (Verdi provides plenty and demands a lot in return). But she spends so much time scuttling about in a big coat, that we don’t really get to know this Aida. Sure we catch the dilemma she faces when the man she loves goes out to fight her people, herself powerless as a captive in the Egyptian King’s court, but who really is she?  

That’s not a problem with the vengeful Amneris, who goes for and, of course, regrets when it’s too late, the tactic of saying that if she can’t have Radames, nobody else will. Raehann Bryce-Davis, in her Dreamgirls red dress, took some time to find her vocal feet and was fighting too often for aural space with Daniel Oren’s orchestra, but she did convince in an often caricatured role. 

But this is (and Aida always will be) an opera about spectacle as much as music, and the chorus is key to that. Not only does William Spaulding have them parade with er… military precision, but also provide singing both full-throated in triumph and gorgeously subtle in an all but whispered accompaniment when required. They embody the opera’s scale - at once, that of a totalitarian regime and also of a secret, dangerous, forbidden love affair.

With American soldiers sent to the Southern border, no sign of an end to Ukraine’s existential war and China surely just biding its time over Taiwan, the production’s concept feels like it should be urgent - and it is. That said, especially on this cavernous stage and with video to drive the message home still further (and Verdi himself would certainly approve it), the human story is lost a little. Three vulnerable people make bad choices and pay a hideous price, but we’re still wondering about for whom those missiles are intended - there are just too many candidates these days for us to do otherwise. 

Aida at the Royal Ballet and Opera until 12 February

Photo images: Marc Brenner

  

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