At Seattle Opera, a Lavishly Zambellished ‘Aida’ Skimps on Egypt

Cover image: Leah Crocetto (Aida) with cast members of Seattle Opera’s Aida (Photo: Philip Newton)

The premise for this Francesco Zambello production of Verdi’s Aida was simple: zero in on the relationships rather than the grand whole. To do that, she felt it would help her plan if the locale was nowhere special and the era was timeless.

Trouble is, you can take ancient Egypt out of Aida, but you can’t take it out of the libretto. Ultimately this lavish production, which has just begun its run at McCaw Hall for Seattle Opera, doesn’t work.

But, after all, the main reason for opera is the music and the voices. Verdi’s music is superb, and was excellently played by the orchestra under John Fiore. The love triangle comprises Amneris, the princess, justly suspicious and jealous of her slave Aida and the army leader Radames. Saturday night’s performance had mezzo-soprano Miljana Nikolic as Amneris, soprano Leah Crocetto as Aida and tenor Brian Jagde as Radames, while the High Priest Ramfis is bass Daniel Sumegi, Amneris’ father bass-baritone Clayton Brainerd, and Aida’s father Amonasro, baritone Gordon Hawkins.

Since his accession as general manager of Seattle Opera, Aidan Lang has shown himself a master at choosing voices which have enhanced every production. This time, he was not quite so successful. Nikolic’s mezzo has the low notes, but she has a somewhat woolly quality to the voice, plus an omnipresent huge vibrato which obscures what tone she is on, and in high entries she was frequently a tad flat. On the other hand she was the best actress in the cast with a role in which she handled the emotional dichotomy magnificently. Jagde has a fine tenor though one could have wished for a bit more dynamic nuance in his presentation.

Hawkins has been here many times before and delighted the audience, but his voice here sounded a bit flabby as did that of Sumegi. Crocetto did splendidly, a fine singer. However it was locals who shored up the sound. Brainerd and soprano Marcy Stonikas as the High Priestess gave excellent performances as did tenor Eric Neuville as the messenger, while the chorus, always the best part of Aida, was terrific.

Stage directed here by Zambello’s assistant, E. Loren Meeker, the first part one sees is the scenic design which first appears on the curtain. Zambello chose Retna, the artist who uses different calligraphies as a jumping off point for his work. Here he created curtain, backdrops, sculptures, banners, and more using a crazy quilt of imagined calligraphic images. One audience member described the backdrops as reminiscent of tic-tac-toe. To this audience member, they largely looked like a binary system of zeros and ones, while the big sculptures in the third act looked like large weird insects.

For timelessness, the costumes come from different eras, but it felt very odd to see soldiers, apparently immersed in paperwork and discussion around steel folding tables and dressed like Mussolini’s army in WWII (or maybe somewhere in Central America), including jackboots, talking about threats from Ethiopia on the Valley of the Nile and Thebes, and consulting the goddess Isis as to who should lead, deferring to the High Priest.

Amneris, princess of Egypt, remains a princess, dressed in flowing robes which are discordant with the soldiers’ garb. In the second act in Amneris’ boudoir, with her ladies in multicolored flowing robes seated on cushions, a troupe of small boys in child versions of army costumes, (this time British colonial with white shorts and knee socks) came prancing through, dancing around, doing cartwheels. What were they doing there?

Dancers abound. Verdi inserted music specifically for two dance sequences. Zambello chose contemporary choreographer Jessica Lang to create movement not just for Verdi’s chosen moments, but as connectors for other times in the opera. But these were all distinctly balletic and somehow didn’t fit with what the libretto insisted was early Egypt. There were other disconnects when characters or scenery were not as the libretto had just said, such as the tomb being quite clearly open when the libretto has just said it was closed.

The triumphal march wasn’t a march. Dancers danced, Amneris and her father the king came in, also conquering hero Radames. Soldiers came in and found places. The prisoners were brought in. This was after a battle so you’d expect the prisoners to be soldiers, but no, these were families with women and children.

All these disjointed and puzzling sections detracted from the intention of concentrating on the relationships. Mark McCullough’s lighting was insightful and atmospheric, but please, next time, may we have a more coherent Aida? The audience seemed conflicted. People were slower to jump to their feet at the end, and some applauded little.