Verdi: Aida Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Verdi: Aida Blu-ray Movie Review

Get your hands off me, you damned, dirty. . .Aida.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 24, 2010

Lady Liberty, the beautiful statue which has stood for well over a century outside of New York City, had its iconic stature rather dramatically revised in the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes. When Charlton Heston stumbled down the beach at the film’s denouement and discovers the ruin of Bartholdi’s immense handiwork, realizing he had been on Earth all along, it was one of the most memorable moments in 1960’s filmmaking. That same ambition to revisit a rather redolent structure is part and parcel of this odd 2009 production of Verdi’s Aïda, done in a really interesting outdoor lakeside presentation at Austria’s Bregenz Festival. Not only do we have the Statue of Liberty, newly blue and literally star spangled, we have an immense set, complete with water features (not to mention an actual lake), that attempts to meld America with ancient Egypt. It’s an arresting idea, one which plays with Aïda’s subtexts about war and slavery, but one which adds a whole new post-Abu Ghraib interpretation to one of the most beloved operas of all time, and rarely if ever to the piece’s benefit. This is an outing which features an eye-popping and audacious physical production, but which can’t overcome the exigencies of an outdoor performance or, more importantly and devastatingly, insanely large cuts in Verdi’s score to keep down to around two hours’ playing time.

This gorgeous lakeside is the setting for this Aïda.

You know you’re in for a shall we say unusual Aïda when we’re privy, before the opera begins, to an assortment of various folk, only some of whom seem connected to the production, as they dance and frolic around the immense seaside set by Paul Brown. Once Verdi’s gorgeous and strangely serene Prelude begins, we really know we’re in for something unusual when a huge crane pulls two “lifeless” bodies out of the water and hoists them skyward. (For an unintentional laugh out loud moment, watch as the dead man’s head careens into a boom pipe). Suddenly we’re off into the faux Egyptian world of Verdi and his librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni, only this time it’s blended with an odd assortment of modern costumes (often with Egyptian headwear) and a frankly bizarre, proto-sadomasochistic use of hoods and chains, so that Amneris (Iano Tamar) doesn’t have cats on a leash, but instead two humans crouching on their hands and knees.

Bregenz features one of the most awe inspiring settings one could hope for—for a vacation, not necessarily an opera. While the visual splendor of this Aïda can’t be denied, the setting itself creates more problems than it’s worth, as director Graham Vick attempts to fill the immense space with all sorts of stage business by extras, a fact not aided by television director Felix Breisach, who frequently cuts to ensemble members even as some of Verdi’s glowing solo lines are being sung. And speaking of those glowing solo lines, more than once throughout this opera, especially in long shots which take in all of the gargantuan set, plus the cranes, plus the 7,000 people in attendance, plus the lake, I had to struggle to see where the actual singers were. This predicament wasn’t ameliorated even by midrange shots, as Vick frequently has characters who really should be singing to each other separated by vast spaces and basically singing “full frontal” to the audience rather than to their onstage counterpart.

Aïda, despite its epic setting (not particularly this staging), is an unusually intimate piece of opera, something hinted at by the unsettling quietude with which Verdi both opens and closes the piece. That up close and personal aspect is almost completely lost in this presentation, which is doubly hampered by what seems to be inadequate micing, leaving many singers’ voices lost in the windy climes of Bregenz. While Tamar’s Amneris manages to at least partially overcome this obstacle, even her resonant voice gets lost in the fray a lot of the time. Her cohorts Tatiana Serjan as our title heroine and Rubens Pelizzari as Radames either were both having off nights when this was filmed, or were simply vocally not up to the task of handling Verdi’s challenging lines. In a rare display of audience reticence, listen at the close of this opera as the applause actually quiets down when Serjan comes out on the floating section of the stage. It’s a very unusual reaction and one virtually alien to the usually well mannered world of opera.

The most hobbling aspect of this immense production is the unavoidable harm done by cutting the score so egregiously. Evidently ferrying in 7,000 paying customers by public transportation takes a lot of time, and Bregenz’ buses end their service long before midnight. Since this festival waits until dusk to get started, their standard operating procedure has been to stage shows that come in at around two hours, and not to include any intermission. That means cutting Verdi’s supreme achievement by over an hour, and it’s an editing job that can’t help but harm the overall shape and even coherence of the evening.

This is a production that definitely has a directorial vision, for better or worse. While the American right wing will probably react negatively to the outright political posturing of some of this revisionism, the fact is it actually does fit, at least more or less, with Aïda’s story. I won’t even go so far as to say Vick devolves into “Eurotrash” with this reimagining of the opera, as there is a coherence and uniformity to the physical production that actually supports the text. What this Aïda ultimately can’t overcome is its own immensity, especially in the vagaries of an outdoor performance, mixed with some vocal inadequacies and wholesale cuts to Verdi’s gorgeous score. Those are “liberties” which would turn any statue (not to mention any Verdi lover) blue.

Verdi: Aida Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

If nothing else, Aïda provides a wealth of really gorgeous visual spectacle, and it's all well captured on this Unitel Classica C Major release, delivered via an AVC encode in 1080i and a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Colors here are gorgeous and well saturated, with robust blues and reds especially prevalent. Detail is also exceptional, so that the rough edges of the plaster set can easily be made out, as well as the structure of the ornate costumes. Black levels are exceptional, especially once the show gets into the darker evening hours. Despite many of the ensemble being clad in black, their costumes never crush into the intruding darkness. Flesh tones are also accurate, and the overall look of this offering is excellent.

Verdi: Aida Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Unfortunately despite offering two lossless audio options (a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and an LPCM 2.0 folddown), this recording can't overcome the exigencies of having been done outside, perhaps with an inadequate sound system. In doing some research for this review, it appears that Bregenz' standard operating procedure is to have the orchestra (in this case the Vienna Symphony) housed in a building some way distance from the actual lakeside stage. That in and of itself creates synching issues, but the overall problem with this recording is one of volume and especially balance. While the orchestra, which it seems was inside in a relatively well mic'd environment, sounds robust and clear, the voices are often spread thin and simply get buried in the overall mass of sound. Coupled with the less than precise singing which hobbles this Aïda, we're left with an at least average recording (on the orchestral side, anyway) which doesn't deliver the goods either musically or sonically. This is one of the few real disappointments I've experienced in my years of reviewing the usually fine family of labels distributed by Naxos.

Verdi: Aida Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on the disc. The insert booklet has the usual essay and synopsis.

Verdi: Aida Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I really wanted to love this Aïda, if only for its truly stupendous physical production. However, this Reader's Digest version makes a mockery of one of the most sublime of Verdi's achievements, and is further done in by its very immensity which robs the opera of its tragically personal love story. If you want a couple of hours of visual splendor, put this on as digital wallpaper and listen to a good recording of Aïda as it plays.