AIDA
TORONTO
SKYDOME
Aida opened as the first major event to be staged at Toronto Skydome (Rogers Centre) with two evenings for a total audience of 84,000. The greatest show ever in Toronto. Principal cast: GRACE BUMBRY, BRUNO SEBASTIAN, PAUL PLINSKA, LOUIS QUILICO
ARTISTIC CAST
- CONDUCTOR | GIUSEPPE RAFFA
- DIRECTOR | MAURO BOLOGNINI
- SCENOGRAPHY | TITO VARISCO
- COSTUME DESIGN | LUISA SPINATELLI
- COREOGRAPHY | BRYDON PAIGE
- NATIONAL ORCHESTRA OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC
- PRAHA STATE OPERA BALLETT
- AIDA | GRACE BUMBRY
- RADAMES | BRUNO SEBASTIAN
- AMONASRO | LOUIS QUILICO
- AMNERIS | RUZA BALDANI
- RAMPHIS | NICOLA GHIUSELEV
- RAMPHIS | LUIGI RONI
GRACE BUMBRY
BRUNO SEBASTIAN
RUZA BALDANI
NICOA GHIUSELEV
LOUI QUILICO
VIDEO
watch the trailer
News papers articles
National Post Toronto by Arnold Edinborough
Verdi’s Aida was originally conceived a “big opera. It was commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt; its original libretto was written by an egyptologist who was overwhelmed by the massiveness of Egyptian sculpture; its premiere took place at the brand new Cairo Opera House in December, 1871.
Because of its epic proportions – warring nations, troupes of priests, conquering army triumphs – Verdi oversaw every details of its first dozen openings in Europe in the next five years. For him, though the scene was large, the essence of the opera was the love triangle, of warrior hero, rejected princess and adoring (and adored) slave.
After Aida was given its hugely successful performance at the Paris Opera, Verdi’s tight control of its mise en scene was loosened.
These days, the opera’s is anybody’s stage conception. It is lavishly staged every summer in Rome at the Baths of Caracalla in front of an audience of 10,000 in the open air. That production has four horse galloping on the with the conquering hero Radames, in his chariot and a camel chewing its cud on the banks of the Nile as Aida sings her great lament about never seeing her homeland again.
If Rome can have a successful production with this livestock, why should not the world, as viewed principally from North America, have even more successful productions with two camels, 11 horses, four elephants, two lions and 30 white doves?
Eight ton Sphinx
That, at least is the rationale behind the presentation of maestro Giuseppe Raffa, artistic director and entrepreneur of Operama .- International Opera Festival, based in Montreal. He brought his enormous cast and set to Toronto’s SkyDome last month – 1,250 singers and extras, along with the Sphinx, which at 45 feet and almost eight tons, dominates the set.
Such dimensions need heroic singers and Raffa has those too: Grace Bumbry, one of opera’s greatest international talents, was Aida, partnered by Bruno Sebastian a tenor from La Scala, the Met and other great opera houses, as Radames. Claude Corbeil, the magnificent Canadian bass-baritone, who has sung everywhere in Canadian opera as well as London’s Covent Garden, was Ramfis, the high priest.
Put all this in the SkyDome with its 40,000 available seats and what do you get?
Not opera, despite Maestro Raffa’s passionate avowal that this is what he’s taking to the people.
From my seat, one tier up from the ground behind home plate when the Toronto Blue Jays are in town, I was more than 100 metres from the stage.
I could see the great phalanxes of marching warriors and could appreciate the way the enormous Sphinx opened its arms to display a playing area inside its body. I saw the camels and horses and, when my companion pointed them out to me, the elephants at stage left.
What I could not see were Aida, Radames and the rest. For that I had to rely on the huge television screen, which projected 20-foot high singing heads about 50 feet or more above their actual, miniscule bodies.
What we could see was therefore, technologically created. But so was what we could hear. All the singers wore microphones and their voice were put trough three mixing panels and broadcast from 36 huge amplifiers scattered around the arena.
All this was disorienting. You watched the screen to see; you heard as if you were listening to a monster recording; and all the time in the distance, pirouetting and parading about a set almost an acre in size, were the only human elements in an elementally human story.
As for Raffa’s talk of bringing opera to the public and claims that his production was not elitist, the cheapest tickets cost $35. Most were a good deal more, many costing $125. Such prices don’t strike me as populist.
What we got for that money was not opera; it was a spectacle. The loudest applause was not for the singers, it was for the elephants. And where the lovers subsided into their dying embrace and the tomb closed over them forever, the effect, so magnificently created and worked for by Verdi in his music, and by Bumbry and Sebastian in their singing was trivialized by the loosing of 30 white doves into the great stadium.
Don’t misunderstand me. As a spectacle it was superb, except perhaps accompanied by a little too much incense, which created the fog patches in the inert interior of the SkyDome.
Although the sound reproductions was kinder to the male singers and took the gorgeous warmth out Bumbry’s wonderful voice, the opera was well sung. The great set scenes were just that – great.
More compelling
If, as Raffa maintains, his production will introduce opera to many people who have never seen it before, good. But if they buy tickets to any opera company in Canada, they will find a warmer, richer and more compelling experience than that offered last month in Toronto.
I doubt if many who went to Aida will go to opera. They will prefer other spectacular displays, such as The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, where flashy effects crowd out of the artistry of composers and performers.
Which is, ironically, exactly what Verdi was concerned about. In a letter to his librettist just before embarking on Aida, he wrote:
“In Paris I can never have my music performed the way I want…there are too many connoisseurs. Each one must apply his standard and his taste and, what is worse, according to a system…The composer soon looses his confidence…At my rate, he finally has in hand not an opera of inspiration but a mosaic, as beautiful as you may wish but still a mosaic”.
The Age of Aquarius that moves into the Age of Mosaic, of bread and circuses. The SkyDome Aida was a circus and you certainly needed a lot of bread to get in, as other people will see as the production lumbers across the land and sea to other 50,000-seat arenas.