It’s hardly surprising that the Taipei Symphony Orchestra (台北市立交響樂團, TSO) has opted to stage this month’s production of Verdi’s opera Aida in the Taipei Arena (台北小巨蛋). If there ever was a work that demanded to be seen on a huge stage, with all possible scenic and acoustic grandeur, it’s this one. It’s almost a definition in itself of what the term “grand opera” actually means.
All the evidence is that this is going to be a magnificent production. It’s claiming to be on a larger scale than any opera ever seen in Taipei, but more to the point is that it’s going to be based on a production by Rome Opera in 2008. Photos of that production are quite simply breathtaking. But considering that the Italian production team will be tackling a stage that’s 42m wide and 10m high, you’re reminded that it has to be a staging that’s visually imposing if it’s to have any chance of having an effect in that vast space.
The TSO’s recent operas, staged in Taipei’s congenial Metropolitan Hall (城市舞台), have always been particularly attractive to look at. This Aida, though, is going to be something on a totally different scale, and arguably represents the TSO bidding to out-do the opera productions mounted by the National Symphony Orchestra (國家交響樂團) in its spacious National Theater and National Concert Hall complex in Taipei.
Photo Courtesy of Tso
The TSO has gone out of its way, too, to secure an impressive international cast for the production, something it hasn’t been in the habit of doing in recent years. The tragic death in August of Salvatore Licitra while riding his scooter in his home province of Sicily has robbed the production of its leading tenor, but his replacement in the role of Radames, Mario Malagnini, appears to have an impressive record.
However, it’s the securing of the baritone Juan Pons, in the role of Amonasro, King of Ethiopia and Aida’s father, that, even from the beginning, represented the TSO’s greatest coup.
Pons first came to my notice in a marvelous DVD from New York’s Metropolitan Opera of Puccini’s one-act opera Il Tabarro (The Cloak), where Pons sings Michele, and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (Clowns), where Pons sings Tonio (DG 073-4024). It’s one of the great opera DVDs and Pons is stunning in both his roles. He’s a world-class operatic baritone, so whatever else you do, watch out for the Amonasro in this Taipei production.
The Belgian soprano Isabelle Kabatu will take the title role, while Aida’s rival Amneris, who also loves Radames and is the daughter of the Egyptian king, will be the mezzo-soprano Rossana Rinaldi.
When Verdi sat down to write the music for his tale set in ancient Egypt he was the most famous opera composer alive, and many people thought it might be his last and consummating achievement. It was commissioned to be premiered in Cairo, and Verdi was paid four times as much for it as he had ever been paid for an opera before.
It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that the work contains plenty of pageantry and ceremonial marches. It was intended to impress on a large scale, commensurate with the grandeur of Egypt’s past and its increasing importance in the modern world (the Suez Canal had been opened in 1869, two years before the opera’s premier in 1871).
Fifty years later, however, up-to-date thinkers thought Verdi was ridiculously old-fashioned. In D.H. Lawrence’s 1922 novel Aaron’s Rod, Aaron Sisson leaves his wife and family and wanders Europe in search of his soul. At one point he attends an opera but finds it over-blown — loud, pompous and lacking the simple purity of the flute he plays to console himself. The opera was Aida, and Aaron’s view of it for certain reflected Lawrence’s. With its grand set pieces — choruses, arias and romantic duets — this was the music of a discredited past.
And when Verdi came back into fashion in the 1960s it was his last two works, Otello and Falstaff, that formed the foundation of his revived reputation. Earlier blockbusters such as La Traviata, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore had never lost their appeal, but Aida was somehow stranded between the two styles, as ambitious as the two final works but written in the traditional format of the earlier ones.
The opera begins with the Egyptians preparing for war with the Ethiopians. Aida is an Ethiopian princess held captive by the Egyptians (who, however, don’t know who she really is), while Radames is the man appointed to lead the Egyptian forces. But he’s secretly in love with Aida, and she with him. After the Egyptians win a crucial battle and bring a batch of Ethiopians, including Amonasro, back as prisoners, the inevitable tensions between love and duty to the state, for both Aida and Radames, aren’t slow to emerge.
The plot then becomes complicated. Crucial, though, is Amneris’ tricking of Aida into revealing her love for Radames — Amneris’ father has decreed that as part of his reward for victory Radames can marry his daughter. Radames, however, plans to escape into the desert with Aida and her father, and unintentionally reveals to them the location of the next attack being planned by the Egyptians. But he’s seen with the two Ethiopians, arrested, and eventually put on trial for treason. After yet more intrigue, Radames ends up being condemned to death by being sealed in a vault under the Temple of Vulcan, a fate in which Aida opts to join him. Politics thus wins out over romance, however generous the Egyptian king felt he was being in his moment of victory.
An Aida in the Taipei Arena with the likes of Juan Pons is effectively a bid by the TSO to restore what in recent years have been its somewhat flagging fortunes. It’s been very generous in allowing refunds for patrons who bought tickets expecting to hear Licitra, and all that’s left is to wish it every success in this hugely ambitious mega-venture.
The Taipei Symphony Orchestra presents Aida in the Taipei Arena (台北小巨蛋), 2, Nanjing E Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市南京東路四段2號), on Oct. 23 and Oct. 25, beginning at 7.30pm. The conductor is Niksa Bareza and the director Maurizio di Mattia. Tickets are NT$500 to NT$4,800, available via NTCH ticketing, at www.artsticket.com.tw, by calling (02) 3393-9888, and at 7-Eleven ibon kiosks.
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