The choreography was created by Jessica Lang, a well-known name in institutional dance. Zambello used a related movement technique as well in her La vestale at ENO some years ago. Evidently the ritualized motions of these males were intended to illustrate religious statehood. When not dancing these groups of males sometimes marched across the back of the stage. Zambello added as well eight dancing boys, and eight more boys who danced but were not trained dancers, two of whom were accomplished acrobats. You may recall his cover art for Justin Bieber’s 2015 album “Purpose.” These symbols (said to actually say something - but only to Retna) covered the show curtain and the huge panels of the triumphal scene, and elsewhere. artist Retna (alias of Marquis Duriel Lewis) to her provocations. This edition adds the hieroglyphic inspired alphabet created by L.A. Stage director Francesca Zambello has been turning out provocative productions of Aida over the decades. If high art emanated from the pit, low taste poured forth from the stage, and it was not unintended. The maestro made exquisite music of this warhorse. More often for Luisotti these days it was a reflective reading of the score rather than a flow of dramatic points. There was innocent playfulness in the Moorish dance, and even in the eruption of violence when Radames surrendered and Aida and her father fled Luisotti sustained measured strokes. Luisotti made this Verdi score all about atmospheres, pulling forth every possible musical nuance to be evoked by the flow of the Nile and the glow of the Egyptian night sky. Conductor Nicola Luisotti carefully sculpted this protracted scene into one of profound operatic intimacy.
Jagde’s knife-edged voice softened and we heard, finally and with welcome relief, a voice of a sweetness and warmth that matched that of Mlle. Once we arrived at the entombment of Aida and Radames Mr.
Leah Crocetto as Aida, Brian Jagde as RadamesĪida’s lover Radames was SFO protÈgÈ Brian Jagde. If there is a star for this current production it is SFO protÈgÈ Leah Crocetto who offered a very sweetly sung Aida, and succeeded in projecting the beauties of the Italian language in an intimate “Ritorna vincitor” - though marred by a premature (surely unintended) drop of the hieroglyphically encrypted show scrim. No echoes at all of the big singers that have always been called upon to evoke the monumental atmospheres commemorating global transformation.Ĭertainly not the 1981 San Francisco production starring Luciano Pavarotti, never-mind-the-name-of-the-opera. Nor of San Francisco’s famed jockstrap-less gay pride Aida, or an imagined specter of a new Zefferelli production recently dismissed by the Met. No echoes of spectacles like the al fresco productions beneath Egypt’s pyramids or Rome’s Baths of Caracalla.
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