Can you dig it? [Review of the new Met Aida]

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

So, I went to The Metropolitan Opera’s New Year’s Eve Gala performance of Verdi’s Aïda having studied several notable recordings and scholarly articles on the work’s composition, buoyed by a persistent “well, maybe…”: signs of the troubling degrees of post-liberal arts decadence and naiveté I have not managed to shake. I had intended to start the new year with a thoughtful, measured engagement with director Michael Mayer’s production, which purports to forefront the opera’s relationship to French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette and his archeological work. I had read Edward Said. I was ready.

Then I saw Aïda. That’s not entirely fair: by the end of the third act, my eyes had locked into a cringing squint, and I had more or less braced myself against it. But I will endeavor to make sense of it all.

First, there were aspects of the production I enjoyed. Unlike the previous Sonia Frisell production, Christine Jones’s sets, illuminated by a series of jewel-toned projections by 59 Studio, conceded that the Old Kingdom may have indeed had colors other than sandstone and the occasional blue accent. The burnished Temple of Ptah was gorgeous. Costumes by Susan Hilferty were flattering. Wigs and hairstyling conformed to the singers’ natural hair types and textures, thank God.

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

During Radamès’s investiture, choreographer Oleg Glushkov replaced the typical nubile priestesses with a parade of young acolytes held aloft by the priests like dangling corpses. It was an effective image. The dance of the Moorish slaves became a moment of genuine bonding between Amneris and her handmaidens. Both choices did much to strip the opera of its more exotic-exhibitionist tendencies. And the Triumphal Scene, one of opera’s great traffic jams, moved efficiently and with minimal visual clutter.

But then we arrive at Mayer’s Aïda-through-archeology concept. As the strings softly rise during the Prelude, an archeologist descends from a cloud of dust into the ruins of the palace complex. (The uncredited actor stumbled out of his harness, poor thing.) Soon the horns join in and the strings swell to fortissimo, and the archeologist flashes his torch against the inscriptions, which become flush with projected colors. His gaze illuminates the dead city. Awe-struck, he fantasizes.

Enter Ramfis and Radamès. The story begins. From there a host of comely archeologists enter the action at intervals, accompanied by the martial fanfares that normally announce the priests’ arrival. They sketch hieroglyphs, survey, and clear dust in the throes of increasing wonder. During the Triumphal Scene, they haul treasures out of the ruins as the Egyptians of their imaginings stare blankly ahead; the real conquerors have arrived. Two archeologists—one male, one female—flank Amneris as she implores Isis for peace in the opera’s closing moments, their eyes full of sympathy.

Mayer’s intentions are clear: contextualize the work without compromising the Met’s ability to deliver spectacle, acknowledge the history while preserving the fantasy. Frankly, I find this approach irresponsible. Other than linking the archeologists to a few menacing musical passages, the staging of these interlopers is largely uncritical and unhistorical. They are an enthusiastic, collegial bunch of youngish people who strut about in smart khaki uniforms—it’s like watching a scout group’s excursion into Egypt.

The Egyptian workers who did most of the actual physical excavation work for Mariette and others of his ilk do not figure in Mayer’s vision; the European “discoverers” roll up their sleeves and get it done, never mind the scores of native laborers who were employed in the extraction of their own cultural and natural resources in the name of Western progress. I was half expecting one of them to snatch the triumphal wreath from atop Radamès’s head and cry, “That belongs in a museum!” à la Indiana Jones. This production obscures, rather than illuminates, its context.

In this staging, Egypt can only reclaim its past glory through Western eyes; it is colorless and lifeless before they arrive. Ethiopian and Egyptian alike appear and speak through the fantasies of others. Some of the flattest of Verdi’s protagonists are further flattened within this frame. Who knows what this Aïda is meant to think or feel? She exists only as a projection of that lady with the notebook, that man in the cap with a shovel. And so, who cares? What is most frustrating is that Mayer recognizes the troubling historical dynamics swirling around this work and shrugs. He presents but does not confront. After all, how many of the Met’s major donors probably have a vase or figurine of iffy provenance from some far-off land and time sitting in their living rooms? We can acknowledge the issue, but heaven forbid we offend anyone with the suggestion that the solution might compromise a modicum of their comfort. If the production is successful in anything, it is in conveying a fundamental liberal ineptitude—what a fitting toast to 2024!

All this might have been likewise shrugged off if the evening had proved musically satisfactory. It was not.

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

As Radamès, Piotr Beczala battled his forbidden passion for Aïda and a nasty cold. He succumbed to both. I can only imagine that he was eager to avoid withdrawing from the opening of this production, as he did with last year’s New Year’s Eve performance of Carmen. Or that someone at the Met compelled him to go on. Regardless, an ashen Peter Gelb begged the audience for their understanding at intermission. “Celeste Aïda,” one of the most devious entrances in opera and an endurance test even for the healthiest of tenors, was labored from the start, yet a nicely floated, if completely falsetto, B-flat at its conclusion gave the false impression that Becza?a might rally as the evening went on.

By the second scene, the cracks began, and he spent the rest of the evening either unsuccessfully grasping at his upper register, taking his lines down the octave, or omitting notes entirely. As a result, the closing cabaletta in his Act III duet with Aïda and the subsequent scena nearly collapsed at points, as conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the orchestra struggled to accommodate the omissions and the on-the-fly phrasing from all onstage. There was an unfortunate verisimilitude to the finale: he did seem on the verge of asphyxiation. My larynx ached for him.

Judit Kutasi left a poor impression during her company debut as Preziosilla in last year’s La forza del destino. Her Amneris did little to change that. Though large, her mezzo-soprano lacks distinctive coloring and consistency across her register: it becomes oddly hollow into upper reaches, as her vibrato spreads dangerously close to a wobble. She was at her best when spewing venom in the Act II duet, even if the prior sighs of “Vieni, amor mio” failed to ravish.

If luscious phrasing is not her forte, then swanning about the stage certainly is. She carried off her kaftans with aplomb, kept her eyes narrowed in an imperial glare, caressed herself lovingly during her more tender moments, and often synched her gestures with orchestral flourishes. The degree to which she threw herself into the Judgement Scene nearly convinced me. She brought a camp sensibility that the evening sorely needed, though I wish the quality of her sound matched her chutzpah.

Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

That brings us to Angel Blue. The production was clearly meant to announce her as the next great American Aïda. A glamorous shot of her in the Temple of Ptah hovered over the corner of 65^th and Broadway for months. Expectations were high. Her performance was often lovely. Her cries of “Numi, pietà” shimmered and ached, and there was a steeliness in her heated exchanges with Amneris that emphasized her character’s regal origins. Her phrasing was intelligent, and her soprano ripened throughout the evening. Blue took “O patria mia” at a meditative pace, allowing many of the phrases to dissolve wistfully. There was an attentiveness to the text as well, as each “mai più” took on a different shade: one quiet with regret, the other accented with indignation.

For all these wonderful qualities, it seemed Blue was still feeling her way into the role. Although her soprano soared securely over the ensembles, her ascents in the more exposed passages were often tentative. The concluding A in the aria mentioned above had ample spin and delicacy, yet she cut it off as soon as she could. (Surely, the diva can be allowed to linger a little.) Overall, it was a dignified, pleasant accounting of the role, but it lacked a dramatic charge that would have rendered her performance truly exciting. I do not doubt that she will find her bearings and assert her presence as the run continues.

Ken Hoard/Metropolitan Opera

From his entrance, baritone Quinn Kelsey as Amonasro oozed presence. You could see the gears in his head turning as he clocked the attraction between his daughter and his captor amidst the frenzy of the Triumph. His singing was the most satisfying of the evening: full-bodied and full-blooded. He rendered Amanasro’s manipulative shifts between paternal tenderness and cruelty credible. As the King, Morris Robinson displayed a steady, authoritative bass. Like Beczala, Dmitry Belosselskiy appeared to be struggling through illness, and his Ramfis was gravelly instead of grave.

The Metropolitan Opera Chorus acquitted themselves well, providing the grandeur and brilliance to which the production aspired. Nézet-Séguin’s reading of the score balanced bombast with close attention to texture during the opera’s dance sequences. The balance issues that have pervaded his recent appearances in the pit were less present here.

The Met continues its Nile cruise into May when this long run of Aïda will make way for the company premiere of John Adams’s Antony and Cleopatra. The critical reaction to that work has so far been mixed, but I am hopeful that it will not be half as inane as this debacle. Here’s to hoping against hope in 2025.