Aida, Opera Holland Park review

Some of this production adds up and some doesn't, says Barry Millington, but there are some impressive performances
Excellent singing: Heather Shipp as Amneris and Peter Auty as Radames (Picture: Robert Workman)
Robert Workman
Barry Millington11 July 2015

Daniel Slater is not the first director to dig beneath the neo-colonial surface of Verdi’s Aida, but what he finds there is strikingly original. Pharaonic Egypt is a modern museum of antiquities, with a Wolf of Wall Street-type party in progress: a hedonistic society fixated on materialistic luxuries. The new theocracy is excessive wealth; the dress code evening wear or heritage. The Act 2 triumphal march is the backdrop to a cocaine-fuelled, sex-crazed orgy for the banking class of a decadent society, in which debauchery is congruent with lust for war. Some of it adds up, some doesn’t.

When Aida and Radames plan to elope in Act 3, they are fleeing this putrid plutocracy as much as anything else. Sealed in the tomb at the end (though Robert Innes Hopkins’s economical set hardly differentiates public and private areas) Radames and Aida reach out but don’t touch. Their idealistic love is also destroyed, it seems.

But why? Slater is too intelligent a director not to have something in mind, but he doesn’t quite nail it.

There’s some excellent singing, however, not least from Gweneth-Ann Jeffers, who incarnates Aida from start to finish. On opening night, a few high notes were insecure, but they’re undoubtedly within reach: this is an ideal role for her. Peter Auty also took time to achieve the heroic ring of Radames, but as the evening progressed, he produced some thrilling tone.

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Heather Shipp works hard to project Amneris’s venom. Jonathan Veira’s full-throated, powerful Amonasro and Graeme Broadbent’s gravelly Ramfis are also admirable. Manlio Benzi generates noble, uplifting paragraphs and authentic splashes of Verdian colour.

Until July 24 (0300 999 1000, operahollandpark.com)

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