Review: AIDA Gushes at The Metropolitan Opera

There is a fragile eeriness to the opening measures of Aida (1871), as the composition by Verdi continues to draw all ears forward, especially as magnetically conducted by Daniele Rustioni for the 1,158th performance of the classic at The Metropolitan Opera.

The initial progression warps time through the pure imagination of its Italian composer, once poised to rehearse orchestras in Milan, Parma, Naples, far from the newly opened Cairo Opera House. Verdi had expressed distaste for from the beginning of his controversial commission for not only the idea of composing to glorify a political event, but for the orientalist allure that Egypt had gained following Napoleonic invasion. There is barely a note of appreciation for the dynamic tapestry of Egyptian music, not ancient, not contemporaneous, in the music of Aida. Evidently, Verdi finally agreed to compose Aida, and for an exorbitant sum, only after the commission was next offered to Wagner.

Ottoman Egypt was all but bankrupted by the extravagance of Ismail the Magnificent, who drowned Turkified Cairenes into a sea of debt in the wake of opening the Suez Canal with his operatic craving. His wish to transform Egypt into a European country was ironically granted. Soon following the world premiere of Aida in Cairo, colonial Britain seized Egypt from the Turks.

By the second minute of Aida, the tonal cadence is cinematic, evoking the grandeur of traditional opera, from the root of its heart in the Italian peninsula. And yet, there are secondary hints of ethnomusicological delight in the opening to Act II, hearkening to the temple and parade music of the ancient polytheists of the Nile whose overlapping festival seasons are still clearly pictured on the Pharaonic hieroglyphs engraved into sunlit stone throughout the mythic lands known to modern Egyptians as the Mother of the World.

Acts III and IV have the most precious harmonic resonances in the opera, furthering its musical art at the ingenious hand of Verdi with a profound magical pulse. As the voices of Aida reverberate through the universal echoes of indiscriminate human struggle, one that transcends culture and time, language and form, that being the conflict between homeland and love. It is a narrative that speaks to the source of commitment, from the exchange of domestic obligation in the ubiquitous tradition of marriage, to the far-flung romance of the international love story.

And more, Aida bleeds with the dream of freedom from slavery. It is a solemn requiem to the double-edged tragedies of war that sever both the victims and perpetrators since time immemorial. Bulgarian soprano Krassimira Stoyanova enchanted as the Ethiopian slave and princess Aida, passionately exonerating the violence of her lover, the ambitious Egyptian officer Radamès, gracefully sung by Spanish tenor Jorge de León. Stoyanova stood with a powerful feminine presence, animating her role with the invisible spirit of love, as overlooked as the subtleties of the music that Verdi composed to the singular set design spectacle that altered the fate of empires. Enthroned majestic, Morris Robinson thrilled as the King of Memphis, his sonorous bass voice thundering proudly through sets that have opened eyelids as widely as mouths for over a century.

Photo Credit: Cory Weaver

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