When the director Michael Mayer set out to stage Verdi’s “Aida” at the Metropolitan Opera, he knew the stakes were high. Audiences had grown attached to the house’s grand, gaudy, long-running production, and he was resigned to the fact that any replacement might be greeted with skepticism.
This classic opera, a love story set against war between ancient Egypt and Ethiopia, is beloved for a reason, Mayer said. “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel,” he added. “But we also felt we had something new to say.”
As Mayer sketched out his new “Aida,” which opens at the Met on Tuesday as its annual New Year’s Eve gala production, he thought back to his fascination as a child with Tutankhamen, pyramids and archaeology. He wanted to infuse the staging with a sense of wonder and adventure.
He decided to include a group of archaeologists from the early 20th century, played by actors in panama hats and safari helmets. (They resurface throughout the production, uncovering the story of “Aida” as they hunt for treasure.) And he worked with the set designer Christine Jones and a team of animators to create a look that blends traditional pieces — vast tombs, imposing statues, towering columns — with vivid digital projections.
“I wanted it to feel,” Mayer said, “as though the hieroglyphics were coming alive.”
But getting this “Aida” to the stage was not easy.
The new production was originally scheduled to open the Met’s 2020-21 season, but the pandemic interfered, and the company was forced to move it to this season. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 further complicated the project, which was planned as a co-production with the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and was meant to star the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko. The Met cut ties with both the Bolshoi and Netrebko.
Still, the Met, which has faced financial problems in recent years, hopes that the updated “Aida,” a repertory staple, will prove popular with audiences and help drive ticket sales for years to come.
“It’s a big, expensive show, and the Met is not thriving financially,” Mayer said. “Making a show that might be dated a year or two after it premieres would be, frankly, irresponsible.”
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said he believes the production will “certainly excite or, at the very least, appease older audiences who are perhaps living in trepidation of what a new ‘Aida’ might be like.” At the same time, he added, it might appeal to a younger generation with scenery that “matches the visual imagination of video games and movies.”
The new “Aida,” conducted by the Met’s music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will inevitably be compared with Sonja Frisell’s 1988 staging, which had crowd-pleasing flourishes like live horses, gold-sprayed props and rugged walls that evoked sandstone. Mayer’s production is more streamlined: There are no live animals, and there is only one intermission, down from the two that were required in the past.
But the Met insists the new version will be no less eye-catching. The general feel of the opera has not changed, with extravagant costumes, designed by Susan Hilferty, and elaborately decorated tombs and temples. (Some set pieces from the old “Aida” have been incorporated into the latest production, including a pair of temple columns that were repainted and elongated.)
More than 200 singers, dancers and actors animate the stage, including the tenor Piotr Beczala as Radamès, the warrior torn between his love for Aida (the soprano Angel Blue) and his patriotic duty; the mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi as the princess Amneris; and the baritone Quinn Kelsey as Amonasro.
The showstopping Triumphal Scene is still exuberant — though in this version, the procession features archaeologists plundering Egypt’s riches, rather than soldiers displaying bounty from Ethiopia.
Mayer said he wanted to maintain the spirit of “Aida” while highlighting provocative themes, like the impact of Egypt’s raid on Ethiopia and the removal of cultural artifacts by Western explorers. (Other recent productions of “Aida” have posed similar questions, including a contentious 2021 staging by Lotte de Beer at the Paris Opera.)
“Imperialism and colonialism is in the DNA of these discoveries,” Mayer said. “It’s this cycle of violence against these cultures.”
In the new “Aida,” archaeologists inhabit a world distinct in time from the opera’s familiar drama. In the opening moments, an archaeologist descends into a tomb, flashlight in hand. Then the action shifts to the royal palace in Memphis, where the high priest Ramfis informs Radamès that Ethiopia is preparing to attack Egypt.
The focus on archaeology in the new “Aida” was inspired in part by the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette, who played a role in bringing the idea for “Aida” to Verdi and supervised the scenery and costumes for the opera’s premiere in 1871, in Cairo.
Jones, the set designer, who previously worked with Mayer to update the Met’s “Rigoletto” to 1960s Las Vegas, and on Verdi’s “La Traviata,” immersed herself in sketches by Mariette and other experts. She said she endeavored to bring a sense of mystery and discovery to the sets.
“The story of ‘Aida’ is so much about these unending wars and the ghosts that haunt you,” she said. “I wanted the space to also feel somewhat haunted.”
Blue, a Met regular, resisted “Aida” earlier in her career because of the vocal challenge. But she debuted in the role last year at the Royal Opera House in London, and felt a deep connection to the character.
“She’s a very strong woman,” Blue said. “But strength doesn’t always require speaking out. Sometimes, strength is quiet. She has to maintain her dignity, at whatever cost.”
Mayer is best known for his work in theater, including “Spring Awakening,” which won him a Tony Award for directing, and the recently closed “Swept Away” on Broadway. He has also become a fixture at the Met, and in September he opened the Met season with Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s “Grounded.”
With “Aida,” he said, he is eager for a production that endures.
“I hope the audience loves it as much as the other ‘Aida,’ and that they find new things to love in it,” he said. “I hope that they walk away feeling like ‘Aida’ is an opera worthy of the adoration that it has maintained through the centuries — and that there’s still something new to see in it and think about.”
The post ‘Aida’ Returns to the Met Opera Through Archaeologists’ Eyes appeared first on New York Times.
