‘Aida’ Review: Glum Grandeur at the Metropolitan Opera

Starring Angel Blue and Piotr Beczała, Michael Mayer’s new staging of Verdi’s Egyptian classic favors monumentality at nearly every turn, but it struggles to come to fiery dramatic or musical life.

By 

Heidi Waleson

Jan. 2, 2025 at 5:19 pm ET

Angel Blue PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

New York

You know you’re in trouble when a grand new production of Verdi’s “Aida” only catches fire midway through the second act, after the “Triumphal March”—when Amonasro shows up.  The Metropolitan Opera’s show, directed by Michael Mayer and unveiled on New Year’s Eve, was announced as a fit replacement for the large-scale Sonja Frisell staging from 1988: No radical updating and lots of lavish stage pictures, replete with Egyptian iconography, to delight traditionalists.  The pictures were indeed pretty, but the music-making struggled to infuse them with life.

The first sign of problems appeared early: Radamès, the Egyptian general besotted with Aida, the Ethiopian slave, launches the evening with the difficult “Celeste Aida” and tenor Piotr Beczała sang it with extreme caution rather than ardent abandon. His performance deteriorated from there, with cracks on high notes and in loud passages, and spots where he held back rather than singing out. Something was clearly amiss, and the Met’s general manager, Peter Gelb, made a curtain announcement after intermission that Mr. Beczała was recovering from a bad cold but wished to continue. This was an unfortunate call. The strangled sounds got worse, leaving the audience to worry about the damage this fine artist was doing to his instrument rather than concentrating on the show.

The challenge of “Aida” is to balance the monumental with the intimate, as the human emotions—love, jealousy, patriotism—of the four principal characters are mangled and crushed by the demands of a martial, priest-dominated state. Monumentality had the upper hand here. Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s forceful conducting and the massed sound of the excellent Met chorus worked in grandiose moments like the “Triumphal March” (complete with costumed trumpeters in the boxes adjacent to the stage). However, Mr. Nézet-Séguin also powered through the more personal scenes without shaping their tragedy.

Along with the ailing Radamès, this meant peril. As Aida, Angel Blue was affecting in her opening aria, but her soprano lacked the warmth and bloom to be persuasive as the conflicted heroine, torn between her love for Radamès and her longing for her homeland.  By contrast, Quinn Kelsey, as her father Amonasro, commanded the stage with the vocal authority of a true Verdi baritone; unfortunately, he has only two scenes. Mezzo Judit Kutasi, as the princess Amneris, burning with unrequited love for Radamès and fury at Aida, grew in strength and complexity all evening. Her despairing scene when she realizes that she has destroyed the man she loves was a highlight. It was much more potent than Radamès and Aida singing their subsequent death duet in the vault, which should be the opera’s most wrenching moment. Dmitry Belosselskiy was insufficiently lethal as Ramfis, the High Priest; Morris Robinson sounded garbled as the King.

Quinn Kelsey, Morris Robinson and Dmitry Belosselskiy PHOTO: KEN HOWARD / MET OPERA

Monumentality was also the production’s theme. In Mr. Mayer’s concept, early 20th-century archaeologists discover an Egyptian tomb, and the story of its people comes to life. Sets by Christine Jones and projections by the design studio 59 cleverly depicted the familiar architecture and iconography; Kevin Adams’s lighting deftly limned the transitions: As the “story” scenes began, the bright colors on the walls faded and the focus moved onto the singers and Susan Hilferty’s sumptuous costumes, most notably the black and gold regalia of the priests and Amneris’s richly copper-colored gowns, contrasted with Aida’s simple white dress.

A buried civilization also meant that there were no outside scenes on the Nile or in front of the city gates, which reinforced the theme of how the characters are imprisoned—literally in the case of Aida and Amonasro, but also metaphorically, by the macho, warlike state. Oleg Glushkov’s choreography furthered that impression: During the triumph scene, a large cadre of buff male dancers enacted a curious intermezzo of warrior bonding and battle, and in the temple scene, as Radamès was consecrated as the leader of the Egyptian army, child priests were lifted by adult ones in a ritual of continuous domination.

Like the conducting and the set, Mr. Mayer’s direction defaulted toward the grand—all too often, the principals lined up at the front of the stage with ranks of motionless choristers behind them, and the characters didn’t connect in their intimate scenes. In one imaginative beat, the archaeologists carried off their recovered plunder during the triumph scene, a subtle reminder that war is not the only form of pillage. A knife unearthed by an archaeologist at the beginning also makes a Chekhovian reappearance in the finale, giving Amneris the last word. But these small, thematic hints couldn’t compensate for the musical and dramatic shortcomings of the whole.

Ms. Waleson writes about opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).