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Music Review

A Pinch-Hitting Tenor and a Soprano’s Debut on a Trip to Old Egypt

For any opera house, scheduling Verdi’s “Aida” is a safe enough bet. The real danger lies in the casting. At the season premiere of Sonja Frisell’s handsome 1988 production for the Metropolitan Opera on Friday evening the company fielded a trio of soloists of impressive vocal power and stamina. For Liudmyla Monastyrska, who brought her voluptuous soprano to the title role, it was a triumphant house debut. For Carl Tanner, stepping in at the last minute for the ailing tenor Marco Berti, it was a felicitous return after his appearance in Puccini’s “Fanciulla del West” two years ago.

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Members of the Metropolitan Opera performing “Aida” in a revival of Sonja Frisell’s production from the late 1980s.Credit...Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Ms. Frisell’s production, in use for almost a quarter century, is like a large, well-built but rudderless ship. While the absence of dramatic direction made for some static ensemble scenes, the combined fervor of Olga Borodina as Amneris and Fabio Luisi at the helm of a fired-up orchestra nevertheless made for an electrically charged and energetic performance.

From his demanding opening aria, “Celeste Aida,” Mr. Tanner left no doubt about his prowess, singing with a firm, generously sized voice and producing clarion top notes. His phrasing sometimes bordered on the formulaic, but his final duet with Ms. Monastyrska was tenderly delivered.

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Liudmyla Monastyrska as Aida. She comes to the role already having been a star in her native Kiev, Ukraine.Credit...Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Ms. Monastyrska, a native of Kiev, Ukraine, and an established star at that city’s opera house, comes to the Met a fully mature artist. She is gifted with a luscious round soprano that maintains its glow even in the softest notes. Her “O patria mia” was beautifully drawn and colored with darker inflections that added dramatic intensity.

That scene, set on the banks of the Nile at night, was memorable also for the interaction of Ms. Monastyrska and Alberto Mastromarino, who sang the part of Aida’s father, Amonasro, with a steely, glinting baritone and barely contained fury at his fate as the captured king of Ethiopia.

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Liudmyla Monastyrska sings "Ritorna vincitor" from Act I of Verdi's opera.

The Met orchestra under Mr. Luisi showed enormous flexibility in conjuring both the psychological turmoil of the characters and the beguiling exoticism of the setting. A passage in which Ms. Monastyrska’s lines were perfectly shadowed by the cellos, even as they were elastically shaped, spoke volumes about the trust and communication between Mr. Luisi and his singers.

Ms. Borodina’s Amneris was impassioned, volatile, unevenly sung but never boring. Her astonishingly powerful, almost masculine low notes seem to come out of an instrument different from that of the rest of her range, and she used them to bully Aida in their confrontations even where Verdi wants her to be insinuating and sly. But her singing became more refined and interior as the evening wore on, and her final plea for peace was heart wrenching.

The ceremonial scenes with incense and horses and dancers were impressive but revealed the lack of directorial input, as tensions among characters that should still have smoldered went slack. Most disappointing was the final encounter between Aida and Radamès in their shared tomb. Where the music — in an exquisite ironic gesture — finally allows the two singers to breathe, Ms. Monastyrska and Mr. Tanner seemed shy and stiff around each other.

A correction was made on 
Nov. 25, 2012

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this review carried an erroneous byline. It is by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, not James R. Oestreich.

How we handle corrections

“Aida” runs, with some cast changes, through Dec. 28 at the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center; (212) 362-6000, metopera.org.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Pinch-Hitting Tenor And a Soprano’s Debut On a Trip to Old Egypt. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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