Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida is arguably the grandest of the grand operas, firmly in the top-tier stable of operatic war horses.
The music is instantly recognizable, especially the great tenor aria “Celeste Aida (Heavenly Aida)” and the majestic yet swaggering Triumphal March. The sheer number of chorus members, principals, and size of pyramids, Sphinxes, and statues that suggest ancient Egypt would consume mountains of cash and stage space as well as overwhelm the core story.
The Toledo Opera Association will tackle Aida Oct. 16 at 7:30 and Oct.18 at 2 p.m. When the TOA performed at the Masonic Auditorium, now the Stranahan Theater, space was no problem.
[Former] General Director James M. Norman said one production barely had enough room for some horses during the Act II Triumphal March. That’s not the case at the Valentine Theatre. Even with just humans, it does not have the space for chorus members, principals, dancers, pyramids, and gigantic statues.
Norman doesn’t seem fazed. He wants the audience to focus of his favorite opera to be on the very human story of love, jealousy, and what happens when both collide in the middle of a war. And do it without animals treading the Valentine’s stage.
It’s a lesson learned in the spring of 1994, Norman recalls.
“We had two boa constrictors, several exotic birds, and a goat from the Toledo Zoo, and four horses,” he wrote by email. He said the chorus was arrayed on steps on each side of the stage during Act II’s Triumphal March scene, and two horses stood on each side.
“The two horses on stage left (my side) must not have liked the sound coming from the pit because they began to back up. As they backed up nervously, so did the chorus on the steps. We kept going up until there were no more steps left,” he wrote. “You don’t realize how big horses are until you are staring at the backside of one, or two.”
The animals settled and the opera went on without incident.
Aida, the title character, sung by one of the role’s leading interpreters, Mary Elizabeth Williams, is really an Ethiopian princess enslaved by its neighbor and nemesis, Egypt. She serves Amneris, sung by contralto Lauren Decker, who has performed in TOA’s Suor Angelica and Cavalleria Rusticana.
The king’s daughter is love with Radames, the top Egyptian warrior. Toledo favorite tenor Brendan Boyle is making his role debut.
Radames reciprocates the feeling, which enrages Amneris. Radames returns from battle with a special prize: Ethiopia’s king and Aida’s father, Amonasro, sung by Nmon Ford. He pressures her to trick Radames to reveal a key battle plan as the war kicks up again, and Radames is caught by Amneris, whose father has given Radames’ hand in marriage as a reward for his victory.
Radames rebuffs Amneris’ pledge to save him if he renounces Aida, and he is sentenced to death. Aida joins him in his tomb, and they are joined together in death as Amneris mourns her love.
Resident artists Timothy Kreuger, Jeremy Do, and Jenna Grissom sing, in order, the king of Egypt, a messenger, and high priestess. Dancers include Nicholas Sipes, Maurice Ivy, Jasmine Ward, Colby Q. Linderman, and Michael Baerga.
The creators mounting the production say they are up to the task. Linda Brovsky, a director renowned for her innovative productions, has directed several Aidas and Verdi’s Rigoletto in Toledo in 2008. Aida was most recently performed in 2013 and the scheduled 2021 production was canceled by the pandemic. Aida was the TOA’s inaugural opera in 1959. It’s again the inaugural event for this year’s opera season.
The scale of the opera is challenging given the scale of the Valentine.
But that doesn’t mean that Aida can’t still retain its grandeur. Brovsky said Toledo audiences will get to experience Egypt thanks to various “tricks” and the use of projections.
“We’re kind of updating the way you usually see Aida,” she said. There will be pyramids.
“The audience will see a traditional production insofar as the sets and costumes are traditional,” Brovsky said. “It’s more how we interpret it and more how we tell the story to make it more psychological. Aida can truly be a park and bark opera, and I don’t see it that way, but it’s been done that way.”
If Broadway’s Matt Steffens has his way, his choreography will not let his dancers park anywhere. Brovsky called his assembled troupe “one of the more remarkable dance teams,” which includes dancers from the Metropolitan Opera and other companies as well as Broadway stars and dancers from his own unit.
“Usually it’s like, ‘oh, yeah, then there were some dancers.’ This time, I think the audience is going to be astonished by the ballets in Aida,” she said.
Still, Steffens said, the dance must align with the story, not overshadow it. He must find a balance between grandeur and the human tale.
“I’m going to try to connotate through the dance the grandeur,” he said. But, he added, “we have to still continue to tell the story of these star-crossed lovers.”
Steffens is familiar with the Valentine, having danced in the 2013 production. Still, he was surprised at the stage proportions.
“I always think of that stage as like giant,” Steffens said. “And when Linda [Brovsky and I were looking at the floor plan, we were like, ‘oh, there’s actually not that much dance space.’ So, I think that does present a challenge.”
He said he envisions a lot of partnering.
“It’s a good way of showing the battle between the Ethiopians and the Egyptians as well as showing moments of the love between Radames and Aida,” he said.
In other words, he’ll find the room, even if he must go up, above the stage. “You always have to find the room,” he said. “That’s the joy of choreographing. Through my career I have worked in a lot of different spaces. I’ve worked in very intimate stages where you’re in a 300-seat theater and also one of the grandest of stages where you have 3,000 people watching.”
Steffens said he’s confident that his choreography will propel the story.
“All the motion is going forward toward the audience with this huge cast and this wonderful orchestra,” Steffens said. “I know that the athleticism of the choreography is going to feel like the story is being thrown into their [the audience’s] laps, and they want to go on this ride to see what happens next.”
Of course, Verdi’s lush score is the vehicle that drives the spectacle and the tender tale of the enslaved princess, the ruling princess, and the man they both love. Maestro Adam Turner returns to Toledo to drive, and he insists that the composer did not intend to let the grandeur get in the way of the story.
“Everybody assumes that [Aida] is the grandest,” Turner said. “But when I really look at it, there’s a lot more scenes in the story than really comes to mind.”
At the end of Act I, for example. the audience is hit with martial music and solemn hymns to the god Ptha. In Act II, we hear the bombastic, militaristic music of the Triumphal March. In both acts are walls of sound and sight.”
But in Act III and IV, the scope narrows to Radames and Aida, and the lovesick Amneris and the vengeful Amonasro. The music changes to a solo voice and solo oboe as Aida bemoans her predicament.
“The composer is really able to play with that isolation the character is feeling and give the audience that intimacy in the middle of this huge grand opera,” Turner said. “And so I think that the biggest challenge is to strike the balance, to figure out how to support these moments of just profound intimacy,” with the grander, more crowded sounds.
The last scene is the heartbreaking outcome, when Amneris loses everything but her life, and Radames and Aida lose their lives. Some stories transcend the size of the stage.
The Toledo Opera and its creators look to do just that with Verdi’s grand music of eternal love.
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