A larger-than-life group of figures welcomes you at the station in Verona: a knight puts his foot on the chest of a conquered man – a remnant from an old production of Giuseppe Verdi’s “Il Trovatore”, set up as an advertisement for the festival. The opening premiere is also about war with Verdi’s “Aida”. The Ethiopians have invaded their country, say the Egyptians, and are taking this as an opportunity to wipe out the last resistance. Aida falls under the wheels, torn between her father, the king of Ethiopia, and her love for Radamès, the general of the Egyptians.
Verdi’s Egyptian spectacle has been at the heart of the festival since it was first shown here in 1913. If only because it optically fills the ancient amphitheater with its mass scenes and state acts. In 62 seasons it was in a total of 726 performances from the schedule, since 1992 annually. With a new production of “Aida” the 100th edition of the festival is being celebrated this year, which does not coincide with the 100th birthday. The festival has had to be canceled a total of eleven times since 1913, ten times in two world wars, once because of Corona.
The line-ups for the next three months could hardly be more glamorous. No singer of international standing refuses to perform at least once in Verona. The title role on the opening night will be sung by the most famous singer of our time: Anna Netrebko.
When she last appeared in Germany, at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden, which was not particularly important nationally, the city and state intervened, and hours beforehand the Hessian Minister of Art called for the performance to be stopped. In Italy the opposite is true: the premiere is celebrated as a state act.
The government is represented by several ministers, the Italian RAI is broadcasting live in prime time. Among the 12,000 spectators, the beautiful, the rich, the well-dressed and sometimes only sloppily dressed, the really big performance is reserved for an artist in the rank of the national symbol: Sophia Loren, who is now 88, celebrates her whole life with a standing ovation own triumphal march. Before the national anthem, planes flying in formation draw the Italian tricolor in the sky. After that, the gods are in a bad mood: Because of the drizzle, “Aida” starts late.
The staging dispenses with Egyptian colouring
The hand of the gods, or even just of fate, represents a monstrous hand made of light bars in the depths of the stage. At the same time enticing and threatening, she stretches out her fingers for the characters, a technical masterpiece also by the director and stage designer Stefano Poda, whose production shimmers between technicalism and archaism.
On the right, war has broken an ancient column, on the left a futuristic spaceship. Poda is an all-round artist with advanced aestheticism, who has also worked at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich, among other places. His staging in the arena, on the other hand, is a gamble because it almost completely dispenses with the traditional Egyptian color scheme. The judges who finally sentence Radamès to death wear the jackal heads of Anubis. Otherwise, clear colors dominate: black, white, sometimes red. The Janus-faced nature of the gods fascinates Poda noticeably: as an authority that glorifies murder as a holy war, but which is also invoked by the war victims in their distress.
The transcendence remains unfathomable like the silver moon face that hovers high above the stage. Colorful laser beams shoot into the arena, concentric headlight cones meet in the night sky (which would not work in Germany because it would be too reminiscent of Albert Speer’s “Lichtdome”).
As early as 2013, the festival dared a modern production of “Aida” by the Catalan troupe La Fura dels Baus, which was soon scrapped again. It remains to be seen whether Poda’s direction will last. In any case, he can do what the arena needs: to enliven the huge room with show values. With a light hand he choreographs hundreds of choirs, dancers and child extras. Silver crowds raise their fists on long poles in the triumphal march, but Poda still finds an impressive image for the defeated Ethiopians: like in a painting of the Last Judgment, they crawl naked out of a crack in the floor, at the mercy of the victors as earthworms, over which earth is actually soon thrown. Aida sees it with the shudder of the torn.
Netrebko is not allowed to appear in Russia, in the West she is mistrusted
How the debate about Netrebko is pushed over the piece in a peculiar way. The fact that Western directors demanded a statement against Russian President Vladimir Putin put them in a situation that is tragic in the classic sense: having to make a decision and only being able to make the wrong decision. The Russian soprano, who has had a passport and residence in Austria for a long time, did not react like Aida, who unconditionally chose Radamès – she hesitated. With the result that she is no longer allowed to perform in Russia, while she is not trusted in the West either. “O Fatherland, I will never see you again,” she sings as Aida. Her father, Amonasro, accuses her of being just a slave to the Egyptians, who can be treated at will.
Western countries are divided on the subject of Netrebko: in the USA she is just as strictly canceled as in Russia, but she has been appearing at the Vienna State Opera for a long time just as regularly as at the Scala in Milan, the most important Italian opera house, or in Verona, where she could be heard as Aida last year.
For the new production, she was even able to get her husband, the Azerbaijani tenor Yusif Eyvazov, to sing Radamès, just like in the old days of glory. His entrance aria “Celeste Aida” lacks elegance and legato culture, he thunders out the concluding high Bb in fortissimo. Eyvazov sings with verve and passion, and at the end he can take his voice back to the piano. But there is a tragedy of its own in just being a good tenor and at the same time the husband of one of the world’s best singers. Because with Netrebko, the championship is once again out of the question, although Aida is a tricky role, composed for a dramatic soprano that still has to be able to sound easy. Netrebko masters the balancing act, is able to dynamically modulate the voice as desired, to unfold bows with the greatest breath. Even the most extreme pianissimo fills the gigantic space. The way she quietly begs the gods for “pietà”, for mercy, could not only soften stones from Roman times.
In general, despite the mass presence, the music is remarkably differentiated, and the orchestra of the Fondazione Arena di Verona sounds highly transparent. The Italian conductor Marco Armiliato seduces it again and again to almost dance-like elegance, but is also able to strike lightly when necessary. The chiaroscuro of the score emerges in clear tonal gestures.
Olesya Petrova develops a fascinatingly accurate character portrait of Amneris, as Egyptian princess and rival Aidas actually on the winning side. The mezzo-soprano plays with the tempi at the beginning with imperious moodiness, before letting in the softer colors of love, finally letting the desperation explode on the verge of screaming. Even the baritone Roman Burdenko never sounds coarse as Amonasro, but with his noble timbre he ensures the Ethiopian king’s sympathy.
By the way, Petrova and Burdenko are also Russians, only less famous than Netrebko. Which is probably the most important reason why they have so far been spared the tragedy of clear confessions.