Aida: Troubled Night on the Nile

By Truman C. Wang
Saturday, July 12, 2003

   Aida

Opera in Four Acts by
GIUSEPPE VERDI
Libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni
Sung in Italian with English titles

Scott Parkman, conductor
Harvey Berman, director

Performance of Saturday, July 12, 2003
at Kofmann Theatre,
Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts

WALNUT CREEK, CALIF (July 12) – It’s lean times for the arts.  Everywhere, orchestras and opera companies are cutting back on their offerings, if not disbanding all together.  Major donors are hemorrhaging dollars.  Productions are shared among as many as seven opera companies.  Under these dire circumstances, the Festival Opera of Walnut Creek is taking dire measures to stay afloat, by giving one instead of two operas this season, and by presenting the grandest of grand operas in a less-than-grand manner in order to be, according to the company’s press brochure, “fiscally responsible”. 

Aida, Act One

Which begs the question:  How well does fiscal responsibility blend with artistic responsibility?  The answer is, I fear, not very well.  One can argue and rationalize all one wants about the virtues of focusing on the intimate relationships of the opera’s three protagonists.  The argument goes on to say that there is no need for the full complement of mise-en-scène and orchestral forces that are essential building blocks of the French grand opera genre, of which Aida is a prime example.  The truth is that, in the conventions of the French grand opera, human drama unfolds and struggles against an immense backdrop of political and geographical adversaries that threaten to dwarf it.  That is why, in an extraordinary catena of letters by Verdi to his Aida collaborators (between 1870 and the opera’s Cairo premiere), the composer insisted on and labored over such minutiae as the exact number of musicians and their seating arrangement in the pit, and the historical accuracy of staging the Pharaonic Egypt.  That is also why any attempt to present Aida with reduced forces – whether scenic or orchestral (or, in this case, both) – is not only contrary to the composer’s intentions, but will also derail the opera’s human drama.  Given the budgetary constraints, it would have been more preferrable for the Festival Opera to put on a concert performance with a full orchestra and chorus.  (The Opera Orchestra of New York has done so for many years with splendid results.)

The rather stiff stage direction by Harvey Berman (or was it stiff acting?) made it look like a concert performance with gorgeous costumes by Barbara Ann Gherzi.  The stand-and-deliver style of acting effectively turned Verdi back 20 years, to the world of Il Trovatore and Nabucco.  Mr. Berman did not seem to know what to do with the Egyptian slaves chorus, either, who were dressed as European tourists, sitting in tiers and occasionally milling about aimlessly.  They sounded completely out of character in passages such as “Glory to Egypt, and to Isis!” and “Let us dance, Egyptian maidens!”. 

The painted backdrop (again old-fashioned!) and clever rotating faux-Egyptian unit sets are the brainchild of set designer Peter Crompton, and beautifully illuminated by lighting designer James Aitken.  Amneris’ boudoir in Act Two, with its blue lace veils, chaise lounge and soft floodlighting, was enchanting to behold.

(Left to Right) Kathleen Halm as Aida, Lyutsina Kazachenko as Amneris

Musically, the pint-size orchestra simply would not do.  So much of Aida’s dramatic efficacy depends on the contrast of alternating emotions and harmonic colors that only a large orchestra can produce – the grand Amneris-Aida-Radames trio followed by Aida’s solo “Ritorna vincitor”, Amneris’ frenzied plea with the High Priests followed by Aida-Radames’sublime final duet, and the list goes on.  Tried hard as he did, conductor Scott Parkman proved unable to rise up to the opera’s grandeur in several vital passages, which merely sounded thin and scrappy. (He was not helped by the loss of a cellist, who fainted in mid-performance and had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance.)   Maestro Parkman also had trouble with the massed ensembles, which at times threatened to disintegrate into anarchy (I was told things went better at the rehearsal.)  To its credit, the small hall did enhance the intimate moments with Verdi’s delectable writing for the flute, trumpet and harp.

The vociferous response from a large section of the audience (and certain members armed with large bouquets) would lead one to believe there was operatic singing of the finest kind.  Quite the opposite, this was as deplorable a performance as I can remember in my ten years of attending the Festival Opera.  Suffice it to say that the Ramfis of bass-baritone Philip Skinner was the greatest feature of the evening – sonorous, firm, and utterly secure.  In her role debut, soprano Kathleen Halm displayed some lovely soft singing as the Ethiopian princess, when she was not forcing her voice to the breaking point above the stave.  Tenor Todd Geer’s stiffly sung Radames was anything but heroic.  Russian mezzo-soprano Lyutsina Kazachenko’s Amneris, suffering from a bad case of mal’aria, was a fiasco.  There is no law to compel a singer to be accurate in the production of tone or acting in a dramatically plausible manner, but there still lingers, to some listeners, a desire in favor of the practice.  This Amneris collapsed at the end with a calculated efficiency of a toppled statue, not the grief of a woman crushed by her own jealousy and remorse.  The remainders of the cast were acceptable, if not memorable – Bojan Knezevic’s menacing Amonastro, Kirk Eichelberger’s potent Pharaoh, and Hope Briggs’ pure-toned High Priestess.

Let’s hope that next year the Festival Opera of Walnut Creek will return to fiscal health, and to the smaller operas it did so well in the past, and leave grand operas to its big cousin across the Bay.

Remaining show dates are July 15, 18, 20.  Tickets are $28 to $58 and may be ordered at the Opera box office (925) 943-7469 or online at www.festivalopera.com
 

Truman C. Wang is editor of Classical Voice.

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