1 - 7 March 2001
Issue No.523
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 1 - 7 March 2001 Issue No.523 |
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Ghosts that hang around
Verdi's Aida; Cairo Opera Company and Chorus, Cairo Opera Orchestra and Cairo Opera Ballet; Ivan Filev, conductor, and Abdallah Saad, director; Cairo Opera House: Main Hall, 25 February
Aida never had to work or relate to anyone she did not notice. She was a princess of Nubia, born at the top of a gold mine, but with a noble heart. The grey matter at the top, though, it has to be admitted, was always strictly limited.
This is what her father shouts at her in Act III of the opera. This scene is always exciting, no matter if it's your hundredth Aida. He demands Aida turns spy and deflect her boyfriend Rhadames, enemy of Nubia, from his high and mighty ways for the sake of her own land of Nubia.
Aida will never go stale as an opera because of its characters, two women of power in love with the same man. That one of these, Aida, is caught between two nations at war is a bonus. Anyway, her true father being Verdi, these characters are told in music of genius -- that of the composer's late period.
Last year's Cairo Opera Company Aida, like this year's, was produced by Abdallah Saad. He does not alter it much this year, except make it more comfortable within the limited range seemingly allowed any production of Aida in Cairo, whether indoors or outdoors. It is successful in both places, and this production is particularly faithful to Verdi. Saad has a good eye. The stage is used with great care and a variety of new visual pictures are created. He is a serious artist and he sees the nobility in Verdi's great arcs of sound. Whatever people say about the continued production of this opera, Saad appears to riposte: So what?
Aida has greatness, and he shows it to his audience. It matters to him, if not to those who really demote it, that Aida is a masterpiece. And so, with Abdallah Saad it is enjoyable, reliable and commendable.
photo: Sherif Sonbol
From the opening act the characters have a life of their own, not realistic, not second hand, but operatically real to themselves. They are made to adopt a strange, slow motion gait, and they become dreams who move and walk at their own tempo with little to do with the living world -- something that fits the production's colours. As with this season's Rigoletto, the tone is rich, sombre, descriptive and never boringly Pharaonic. Sometimes the scenes look like Delacroix paintings, but never orientaliste fairy-tale.
One example from the first act: as the curtains part, well, it's Aida again, so she is somehow or other the most important character in the work, and here she is. Verdi's very great theatrical sense allows Saad to give Aida a luscious build up, to present her as an authentic star, something which is almost never done in other opera houses.
Saad goes the whole way. The set for the production is clever: receding perspectives lined with large, plump columns that outdo Karnak and, central to this splendour, a receding ramp-like elongated passage between the magnificence of the buildings and an entrance that ends centre stage -- all emphasising Aida's aloneness on her long journey to the tomb. From Aida's special leitmotif Verdi deliberately builds this music very carefully into a powerful little symphony. Slowly, majestically, at the Abdallah Saad pace, Aida makes her destined way. She walks alone on this isolated path, a glamorous, tall person in a really gorgeous red robe. It's a wonderful moment, her first appearance, quite unforgettable because it allows Saad to develop her into a character with emotions quite unlike those by whom she is surrounded.
Aida, therefore, is more like a Passion play for once. We will never again be allowed to stay "Oh, Aida is such a drip, Snow White's sister." Here she is, in this production, a creature of space, height and nobility, a trapped royal being crushed by the destiny of two nations. All this shows Verdi's partiality to Leopardian pessimism. This Aida could be called Forza del Destino Number Two.
At the beginning of the opera Rhadames is powerful, not a bleating tenor in a cramped outfit, but really handsome, tall and virile, with a beautiful voice which opens out into a proper tenore robusto, ringing golden and loud. And he's under 30. He is Nicola Rossi Giordano, to be seen and heard.
Boyka Vassileva is another of Cairo's exciting, electric Amnerises. At first you feel -- so she has a lovely voice, but what will happen in Act IV, the Passion of the Princess Amneris? She leaves us in no doubt when this moment comes. She too, like Aida, is noble. No screaming shrew, but a real woman, young, feeling and, in the end, heroic. She is no jealous, bitchy royal. She is able to see exactly what is wrong with the political set-up in her country, and her almost accidental part in it is the cause of the tragedy. At the end, in her Passion, she spits fire, finds the power, looks slim, lovely and, in black, piteous, but never to be dismissed. Her moans close the opera Aida.
Amonasro, Aida's father, is Mustafa Mohamed. What he lacks in sheer inky decibels he makes up for with sincerity. In his anger, he does crack his daughter, insisting on the disastrous spy drama in which she becomes entangled; but at her despairing cry "O mia patria, quanto mi costi?", the shining moment of all soprano divas, he is sympathetic and enfolding to the daughter who is at destiny's mercy.
And Carmela Apollonia as Aida really sang the phrase. She also had a triumph in her Nile aria, with a lovely nostalgic high C. All this part of the work -- soft and high, carefully laundered by Verdi for his own particular Aida, Teresa Stolz -- were negotiated with beauty and ease. Apollonia is a genuine soprano.
Reda El-Wakil enjoys Ramfis, the fascist high priest whom Amneris curses so roundly later. His walk alone suggests power. He adds ample voice, so Ramfis is powerfully portrayed.
The Pharaoh is Abdel-Wahab El-Sayed: very articulate, well-rounded vocally, a nice Pharaoh but one to watch for cunning.
Messenger, Tamer Tawfiq. So good in this role that one wonders why the Opera Company never gives him something larger.
The High Priestess was Gihan Fayed, who sang her opening song beautifully, a lady of character and stature. She sounds from the depths of the temple.
And that is the Opera House indoors Aida for 2001.
The lighting was rather dim; the intervals between the acts too long. The Cairo Opera Orchestra under Ivan Filev was pellucid and produced a centennial year gift to Verdi by producing his Bach-like geometrical Passion music which spotlights the Nile. So, another Aida has come and gone. She is quite impervious, but maybe she will understand the beautiful, wonderful comedy of this being someone's 150th Aida -- and still happy. Tchaikovsky and Brahms concert; Khaled Shweikh (violin), Hassan Moataz (cello) and David Hales (piano); American University in Cairo: Ewart Hall, 21 February
Flawless, perfect, inimitable: one expected it from these players as from the best anywhere; they are world class.
So in the strange, inhospitable chill of the Ewart Hall they did not disappoint. They positively surpassed already-high expectations. The players, Khaled Shweikh (violin), Hassan Moataz (cello) and David Hales (piano), gave two great works: the Brahms Trio for Piano, Violin and Cello in C Minor, Op. 1, and the Tchaikovsky piano trio. Thank God that, in spite of the vanities which whirl around them, three such players can be found who lead the listener through the labyrinth, on a thread of steel, to a musical revelation not often experienced. Such players approach great and imposing works with a humble dedication; they are servants of music and, as Walter Legge used to say, not entrepreneurs.
The two trios are difficult. Played even by such players, there are gaps and spaces in both which remain unanswered questions. How? Why? What are the two composers doing? They are both non-committal. There is almost nothing concrete to guide the listener, yet the experience is unforgettable. We feel a mystery, a seldom revealed voice of music -- hidden and outside experience.
What do the performers of such imaginative perceptions do? They make the best of the unearthly journey common to both pieces. We go along and it is like driving through the countryside, taking in odours of the old old earth, but always sprouting green shoots redolent of the life to come. There are odours svelte, and colours jagged, dry, sun-baked; but all these complexities are washed in an autumnal sunlight of love, old roots giving out new discoveries.
This was a concert not to be missed: weird, prophetic, not possible, but there it goes, something wonderful, flying out into space beyond explanation.
Both the composers under observation are mysteries. Useless to attempt clarification. Tchaikovsky was enveloped in problems, family, sexual, political and emotional, and finally he was beset by cannibals.
Brahms is a change of voice -- lower, more secret than the waves of the sea. A sea creature, he came from the sea, Hamburg, and the smell of it pervades his music. In person, alarming, handsome, strong and fearless, but so totally reserved he was like Poseidon blowing on his conch, the Viennese first man of mystery, one of the indispensable greats of Europe, and he took his load of treasure to the bottom of the sea as he died. No proof of anything but the music. Make of it what we will, we will never find Brahms the person.
The trio played this astounding music with courage, fortitude and success. They peeled away the side issues of the Tchaikovsky to show the work process involved, mental, emotional, and doubts -- the making of a great symphony. All this with three people, magicians, called players.
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