Ken Howard

What a difference three months can make. Opening night of Michael Mayer’s gaudy Aïda started with an Indiana Jones-esque actor rappelling down from the rafters and immediately tripping out of his harness – an apt metaphor for things to come. A mostly new cast proved far more successful at its first revival. If it was not a performance for the ages, it was one that was consistently solid and exciting at its best.

Michael Mayer’s production hasn’t improved – the sets and costumes remain garish (who could have imagined that I would miss Sonja Frisell’s production for its good taste?) and the archaeological framing remains distracting at best, problematic at worst. More annoyingly, the stage action remains incompetent – Aïda shows up onstage at the end of “Celeste Aïda”, leaves, and comes back onstage moments later to the surprise of the other characters onstage who have been pretending not to see her. The children with the ridiculous headpieces still draw giggles from the audience, as do the twerking topless men in skirts. And yet I was more forgiving of the production than upon my first viewing – it’s showy and revivable, and many in the audience loved it. I guess that’s the best we can hope for.

It also helped that one didn’t have to fear whether any of the cast would make it through the performance intact. That’s never a worry with Brian Jagde, who bellows out high note after high note with enviable security. His louder-is-better approach mostly works for Radamès, who is, after all, not one of opera’s more nuanced characters, and it’s thrilling to hear a voice of that strength and power in the ensembles. He even brings a bit more nuance to the part compared to the last time I heard him in the part and manages some lovely soft singing in the final Act. He even manages to look good in the ridiculous leather skirt.

Ken Howard

He’s most thrilling in the Act IV duet opposite Judit Kutasi’s Amneris, with both singers slinging out one viscerally loud high note after the other. It may not be tasteful, but it’s a whole lot of fun. Kutasi sounds better than in the opening run – the wide wobble and suspect intonation remain problematic, but the registers of the voice sound better integrated and the middle sounds more secure. As before she’s an absolutely demented stage presence and makes the most of the text, rolling her R’s like some sort of pantomime villain. It’s eminently watchable if not necessarily listenable.

Roman Burdenko is one of those singers who is so ubiquitous in European houses that I assumed he had made his Met debut long ago. His Amonasro immediately demonstrated his usefulness in this type of repertoire, with a booming, rich baritone and good presence. He’s genuinely scary in his duet with Aïda, declamatory in tone, and has a good sense of Verdian line even if his tone is gruff rather than mellifluous in those key legato phrases. There are also strong contributions from Alexander Vinogradov and Krzystof Baczyk, as Ramfis and the King, respectively, who are thrilling together in their bass-on-bass moments.

It would have been your standard run-of-the-mill Aïda revival were it not for Christina Nilsson making her debut in the title role. It’s an unconventional voice for the part – she possesses a bright, youthful-sounding lyric soprano with a silvery sheen which nevertheless has enough power to sail through the ensembles with ease. It’s a slightly disconcerting effect, as if Gretel or Pamina had been transplanted to Egypt, but she has a good command of Verdian style, an audible chest voice, and does some really lovely portamenti. Her high notes are impressive, ringing and free, but she’s at her best in the quieter moments of the role where she reveals a lovely float. Her “O patria mia” exhibits excellent control, with beautifully tapered phrases and an effortlessly floated high C, and she sounds lovely in the meandering triplets of her duet with Radamès.

She’s a bit stiff onstage and with the text so I’m not convinced that she’s necessarily a natural for the Italian repertoire, but there are few sopranos out there today who navigate the vocal demands of the role with such ease. She sings Eva and Freia in Bayreuth this summer which seem a congenial fit – I’d love to hear her back at the Met as Tatyana, Rusalka, or indeed Arabella.

Alexander Soddy, concurrently conducting La bohème, was excellent, with a swift, propulsive account of the score with tightly disciplined brass during the Triumphal March. Despite his quick tempi, he drew out lovely colors from the orchestra with dusky, atmospheric woodwind solos. He’s extremely sympathetic to his singers and would be a definite asset to the Met – let’s bring him back for the Strauss and Wagner for which he’s celebrated in Europe.