In the world of Grand Opera, it’s axiomatic that they
come no grander than Aida – a work specially commissioned and conceived
from the outset to be enacted on a monumental scale. In the pint-size
setting of the Helikon Opera, the lucky holders of the 200-odd tickets
this venue can seat heard a musical reading that delivered the monumental
in spades, with an appearance of guest conductor David Mukeria. Mukeria
is currently to be found as Music Director at the Georgian National
Opera in Tblisi, but he shares an ethnic background with countryman
Valery Gergiev, in Russia’s North Caucasus. Like Gergiev, he can take
a masterly overview of the sweep and scale of a work and pace it like
a hunter – yet moment-by-moment there is a sense of inspired emotion.
Even in the first bars of the prelude, Mukeria knows how he will be
pacing the closing scenes, reserving colours from his sound-palette
for later. A joyful Helikon orchestra responded in kind, with warm tuttis
and sparky sforzandos that belied careful and detailed musical
preparation. If Monteverdi’s maxim "first the music, then the drama"
has been a little mothballed of late on Bolshaya Nikitskaya St, this
production fused a superlative musical performance with a riveting dramatic
production – neither one having primacy, but the sum of its equal parts
being greater than the whole.
Company founder Dmitry Bertman’s production, like some
others, moves the centre of dramatic interest from Aida herself to her
rival Amneris. This is, perhaps, a C20th neurosis – purer-than-driven-snow
C19th downtrodden heroines like Aida or Desdemona are not nearly so
appealing for jaded modern palettes as an unreconstructed vicious super-bitch
- the triumph of Jackie Collins over Cinderella. The in-house design
team of Igor Nezhny and Tatiana Tulubyova take an interesting route
through the seemingly-impossible task of trying to get the Valley Of
The Kings onto a stage smaller than the Balcony Bar at English National
Opera. The imagery siezes upon the crossover area between the cult of
Isis and the reuse of that imagery by Freemasonry… and on into fascist
iconography. The result is amazingly successful, simultaneously suggesting
Ancient Egypt on a first glance, but with strong overtones of some South
American banana-autocracy. The "monumental" in Bertman’s production
is not on an immediately physical level of space, but in the form of
the crushing emotional sledgehammer of a non-specific police state.
The male chorus appear in ceremonial Anubis headdresses which seem halfway
between Cheops and the Blackshirts, whilst the female chorus appear
in camouflage dungarees, and black Guevara-style berets. Parallels with
inter-African struggles like Rwanda or Angola are not far away. "Su
del Nilo" was an all-too-realistic war-mongering rally, with the
normally cute-looking female chorus as burning-eyed zealots giving ritual
black-gloved Mussolini-type salutes to Nikolai Galin’s magnificently
sung martinette of a Pharoah. With his renowned ability to dazzle with
the unexpected, Bertman keeps these harridans mouthing "Su del
Ni-lo…" during the trio section, brilliantly illustrating the background
thoughts and emotions of the wretched protagonists propelled by events
into their worst nightmare.
Nikolai Dorozhkin returns home to the Helikon as Radames,
and if international opera companies have ransacked Russian houses more
ruthlessly than Egyptian tomb-robbers, let’s be grateful that this glorious
treasure is still on display – a dramatic tenor who can act convincingly
whilst delivering lyrical lines of spun gold in even the extremes of
the register. If there’d been a power outage after "Celeste Aida",
no one could have said they’d not already had their money’s-worth that
evening. Partnering him was Alisa Gibtsa in the title role, who perfectly
portrayed the delicacy and finer feelings of her character in bel-canto
singing to die-for – "Numi Pieta" had the audience on the
edge of their seats. However, Ms Gibtsa also has the big guns in reserve
when she needs them, and has a punchy lirico-spinto top that steamrollered
through the juiciest textures Merkuria conjured out of the pit – luxury
casting indeed. Completing the love triangle was Svetlana Rossiyskaya,
a last-minute replacement for an ailing Elena Ionova as Amneris – but
there was nothing last minute about this phenomenal portrayal. As a
woman scorned, hell hath no fury greater than Svetlana Rossiyskaya in
high-heeled leather boots, jerking the hapless Aida around the stage
on the end of a collar and leash – which Aida wears throughout this
production. The intensity of this performance was almost frightening
to behold, one almost wanted someone to intervene to prevent the wanton,
callous cruelty. Vocally Rossiyskaya is more than on top of things,
socking it out when needed, but with intimate delicacy available for
the quieter self-doubts of a manic control-freak.
The production pits the hopeless fate of individuals
against a pitiless militaristic State – the separate fates of Ethiopia
and Egypt are almost an irrelevance, for in this war, there are only
individual losers. Dorozhkin’s carefully played Radames betrays the
human frailties and concerns that are accounted fatal weaknesses in
leaders. Amonasro, played by an Andrei Baturkin fresh from his success
as Onegin, was appropriately slimy and dissembling, and Pavel Kudinov
sang a decent Ramfis entirely from the confines of an upright sarcophagus.
Mukeria controlled the big chorus numbers perfectly, and careful use
of every available location (including having the offstage handmaidens
of Isis singing in the foyer) maintained the grand scale of the music
in even the confined spaces available. Downplayed famous moments are
almost a production cliché these days, but having a chorus of
tiny children (with eerie black-gloved salutes) as the centerpiece of
the Grand March was an effective device, deepened by having hazy back-projection
of black-and-white films of epic battle scenes fluttering across the
victory pennants of the crowd. A special mention ought to be made for
Marina Kalinina’s terrifying Priestess of Isis – a sword-wielding Angel
of Vengeance that made a much more credible portrayal than the usual
vestal virgin we see elsewhere, and equipped with a military-issue soprano
with a devastating edge to it too.
Natalya Palagina danced the Figure of Death, and appeared
once again in Act II as a female army-recruit specially pulled-out of
the ranks by the sadistic Amneris for ritual bullying for her vicious
amusement – connected-up to bungee-cords and thrown-around the room
by enthusiastic female cohorts. She metes-out the same punishment to
the captured Radames, flogging him viciously with a bullwhip. This interrogation
scene is both a musical and dramatic highpoint, with Rossiyskaya hysterically
flailing at the walls and the floor with her bullwhip whilst Radames
is taken out by the guards – her chilling "moriro!" carrying
an even greater punch than the whip itself. Some creaky scenery got
the final scene in the sealed tomb off to a shaky start, but Gibtsa’s
delicious pianissimos and carefully-judged acting quickly restored the
overall excellence of the evening, with Dorozhkin nobly eschewing grimaces
and other histrionics to expire nobly and peacefully – and magnificently.
Rossiyskaya symbolically comes between the lovers whose lives she has
wrecked to deliver her blessing – even when trying to forgive them,
this tactless Amneris succeeds in destroying the everlasting peace that
they might have at least had in death. This Aida has become a top-rate
production in which one has to make none of the musical allowances that
it required when seen last year, and the welter of talent seen in it
proved that an ensemble-opera, credibly-dramatic production of Aida
can work just as well as a sports-stadium-sized version. The audience
made no secret of their total approval for it.
Neil McGowan
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