Aida
Liverpool Empire
Producer and impresario Ellen Kent is bowing-out of touring opera in the UK provinces and she did so in dazzling style with this truly haunting performance of Aida.
Verdi's tragic story of love and war is centred around the captured Ethiopian princess, Aida.
It has delighted audiences across generations in thousands of theatres since its first performance in 1871.
Today, thanks to the late great Luciano Pavarotti, it includes the best known "sing-along" aria in the world of opera - the spine-tingling Nessun Dorma.
So Ellen Kent had a lot riding on her Liverpool swan song, and she did not disappoint with this evocative and powerful production.
The dazzling set evoked golden pyramids and palaces - the scene of the glittering Egyptian world that unfolded before the eyes.
Soprano Elena Dee's rendition was the stand-out performance of the show, exploring throughout the full depths of emotion embodied in Verdi's score.
Hauntingly, this performance began with a delicate string solo to set the mood for this sombre tale.
Princess Aida has been captured, and is enslaved to the Egyptians, who do not know her real identity as the daughter of The King of the Ethiopians. Whilst being held captive, Aida wins the heart of Radames, and she returns his love.
But Radames is chosen as the leader of the Egyptian army to fight a war against Aida’s own people. In an incredibly powerful scene, we see Aida torn between her true love, and the love of her country and her people. If she supports one, she condemns the other. Her family, her life, her country or her love.
Much of the tension in the libretto focuses on the rivalry between Aida and the Egyptian princess Amneris. She too has fallen in love with Radames, and she will not see Aida happy at her expense.
She tells Aida that Radames has died in war, and tricks her into expressing her grief at his loss - revealing her true feelings. She then taunts Aida, and vows that the ’slave girl’ will never be able to have him.
When Radames returns triumphant, but with Ethiopian prisoners, he is granted a wish by the Pharaoh.
Truly a hero, Radames sees Aida’s distress that her father, and her people will be killed, and so he begs his ruler's mercy, and asks that they be given their ‘life and freedom’. Cunningly, the Pharaoh agrees to this, on the basis that as a gesture of goodwill, both Aida and her father will remain in Egypt, while Radames will marry his daughter.
It is the eve of their wedding, and the final act of the opera. Everything is tense, as Amneris is led away by the priests to pray. Aida and Radames wait to meet each other, but first Aida’s father appears. He reminds of her the blood that has been shed by Egyptian soldiers, and of the suffering of her people.
Aida is forced to agree to ask Radames where the Egyptian army will be waiting, so that the Ethiopians can ambush them, under the threat of renunciation by her father.
When Radames appears, the young lovers speak, and Aida convinces him that they must run away. Before they leave, she makes him tell her which road the Egyptian army will be upon, so that they can avoid it. He tells her as a lover, but her father steps out and he realises he has betrayed his country, for the woman he loves.
The action culminates as Radames is put to death for being a traitor. Although Amneris pleads for his innocence, it is no good, she has repented too late, and will too now suffer the grief of seeing the one she loves die.
News returns that Aida’s father has been slain while escaping, and now, with nothing left to live for except Radames, she returns to face his punishment alongside him. The most poignant moment of the opera invokes a dreadful silence upon the audience, as they see the culmination of a bitter love triangle. Aida and Radames die in each others arms, buried alive.
They say you don't know what you have got until it is gone and so it will be with the works brought to Liverpool by Ellen Kent.
The mass appeal of her productions will be truly missed by the Empire audiences to whom she has given hours of delight since she first began these touring shows in the mid 90s.
We owe her a great debt of gratitude and can only wait to see who and what will fill the popular demand for this kind of really accessible opera.
Aida, along with Turandot and Carmen, is on a nationwide tour including performances in Manchester and Derby and culminating with dates at Sheffield in July.
If you missed teh Liverpool shows it would be well worth the effort of getting to any of the other venues which can be found on Ellen Kent's own web site. www.ellenkent.com
Rating: 9/10
Diana Eccleston, Croydon around 2 years, 8 months ago