Verdi: Aida (Arthaus: 108040) [Blu-ray] [2012]

If you love this war-horse, have 20-30 recordings of it in various formats and are eager to hear it done justice to with new, relatively unfamiliar voices, this blu-ray will quench your thirst. However, if you want a big, impressive spectacle with top-notch production values in today's best technical standards look elsewhere. I'll list my observations in order of appearance, the order they hit your senses. The prelude is the most rushed and perfunctory I've heard and the orchestral playing indifferent. Mehta has been conducting this opera for about half a century. Is the message here "let's get this prelude behind us, get on with the singing and get things moving along"? I think so, because Mehta does not disappoint, his pacing is perfect and attentive and the orchestra does warm up as the production comes together and they play as if they cared (for the most part). The tenor, Marco Berti - wow, un coup de foudre! He nails the difficult "Celeste Aida" with abandon, gorgeous tone and style, great ping and a rare impression of ease, it sounds like it's a cakewalk for him and he's thrilling (no final high B-flat diminuendo - Botha goes for it on the recent MET blu-ray and for that he will inherit the glory of the kingdom of heaven to come). He's not exactly new and unfamiliar; his MET debut was in 2004, he's been around and is featured on several recordings and DVD's, but I never heard him sing that well. The rest of the evening he keeps it almost on that level, but not quite. Luciana D'intino's Amneris is good. She too has been around, her MET debut was in 2005 and with Dolora Zajick around you don't feel there is exactly a famine in Amnerislandia, but she's good, better than most Amnerises you're likely to hear today anywhere.

At this point in the performance you are hyperventilating how the Aida will turn out. I missed Hui He's MET debut as Aida so I checked her Aida on youtube, and based on what I heard I decided to purchase this blu-ray. She is first rate. When this was filmed last year she has sung Aida for 11 years including in LA , in Verona and at the MET in 2010 (scheduled to repeat it this year). I played her Ritorna vincitor twice to absorb it. She has a refulgent rich tone, solid from top to bottom; she has the style, the legato, the projection, the stamina and she nails 95% of the twists and turns of the score. The rest of the cast is good, no complaints, I enjoyed this performance.

The staging is on the traditional end of the spectrum. Within that margin it is on the low-budget end of the spectrum (this was filmed after the budget cuts in Italy). It is in fact risible, the ballets are worse than risible. The Sacred Dance of the Priestesses is disgusting. They have a huge furry beast with an open wound on the altar; a priestess stabs it repeatedly and ...ugh, I closed my eyes, I don't know how it ended, but if you read Leviticus, the part of the instructions for the priest how to perform the sacrifice, it's not much different (except that there are no priestesses in Leviticus). Wouldn't it have been nicer if they had the maidens slaughtered instead and sacrificed? However, der Herr Regisseur must come up with Ein Konzept and I think the Konzept here is that war is cruel, or just "Cruelty" (Radamès looks in the end like he was interrogated by Scarpia's henchmen). It looks like the most complicated decision der Herr Regisseur had to make in this production was whether Amonastro will eavesdrop on the lovers from the right and Amneris will surprise them from the left, or the other way around. Which one is better, actually? Has anyone ever tried having Amonastro interrupt them from the auditorium's aisle, climbing up to the stage, and have Amneris rise up from the stage floor Erda-like? A small variation of this (for bigger budgets) could have Amonastro land down to the stage from a Zeppelin. Now THAT is deep; I'm going to copyright this idea. There isn't much acting, the singers mostly stand and deliver, sometimes making funny faces. However I did glean an important detail regarding the demise of the doomed lovers in the final scene. I always thought that being executed by being "entombed alive" means that they stand and sing in the sealed underground vault until they run out of oxygen. I was wrong; this production clarifies that "A te vivo fia schiuso l'avel" means "sepolto nella sabbia", buried alive (in sand). This demonstration of the technical aspect of the execution is very useful.

The blu-ray has an average bitrate that is less than half of that of an average blu-ray. The image isn't sharp but there isn't much to look at anyway. This blu-ray is a definite top contender for your 20th or 30th Aida. But seriously, if this were the 50's or 60's, and this very cast were assembled for a carefully planned studio recording, the recording would be counted today as a Historic Performance from a Golden Age of singing.

Aida is a tricky opera to stage effectively. It doesn't hold up well to modernisation or revisionism, demanding a very specific mood and setting that one messes with at one's peril. I've seen it done before in a Risorgimento updating to Verdi's time and in Robert Wilson's particular minimalist style, both of which were interesting, but neither were entirely successful. On the other hand, a traditional approach to Aida requires both a big stage to match the grandeur of Verdi's compositions of ceremonial marches through ancient monuments, and not everyone has the budget to go for the Full Zeffirelli. Even then however, the lack of dramatic incident and the demands placed on the singers mean that even a traditional setting can be rather static. Directed by Turkish-Italian filmmaker Ferzan Ozpetek, the Florence production of Aida, recorded here in 2011, tends towards the traditional and looks marvellous, but in how it approaches those other considerable challenges that a staging of the opera presents, it unfortunately falls well short of the mark.

That's disappointing from a musical point of view, particularly as we have as distinguished a musical director as Zubin Metha conducting the orchestra, for if there's at least one thing you would hope to count on from any production of Aida, it's that it presents a vigorous account of Verdi's dynamic score. Aida is one of the most melodic and memorable of late Verdi operas, with hints of grand opera influence, but it's also one that is attuned to the emotional content of the drama with an exotic flavour for its Egyptian setting. The performance initially feels somewhat perfunctory, for the first Act at least, a run-through with no real commitment on the part of the musicians or the conductor. It improves in subsequent acts, warming to the characters and their situation, but there's never a sense that Metha is able to get the orchestra to do full justice to the dynamic theatricality of Verdi's majestic score.

If that's the case - and it's only my opinion - it's at least in step with the lack of dynamism elsewhere in the production. The stage sets, designed by Dante Ferretti, look marvellous - grand statues and monuments bathed in golden light, with colourful sunsets and deep blue moonlit night scenes - and the costumes are traditional and exotic. Stage director Ferzan Ozpetek however is unable to find anything for the singers do on stage but stand and project out to an audience, while priests and choruses stand grouped or march in solemn procession. There's no question of there being any acting involved. Only once is there a suggestion of anything with imagination and that occurs briefly when the traditional pomp and patriotic fervour of the Triumphal March is initially undercut by the appearance on the stage of a young bloodstained child, looking bewildered by the celebration of the slaughter that has occurred. It's a throwaway touch however, soon forgotten under the more traditional, but not particularly imaginatively choreographed battle ballet that follows.

Again, a lack of drama or ideas on the stage wouldn't be much of a problem - it's one of the issues with Aida - if only the singers were capable of making up for the slack elsewhere. Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of strong singing to sufficiently redeem this production. Marco Bertii has a fine tone of voice as Radamès, but his technique is all off and his 'Celeste Aida' is a struggle. He comes through however in Act IV where it counts. Luciana D'Intino is a weak Amneris, her singing shrill and unpleasant, without sufficient force or personality to carry the role - an unfortunate drawback, since it's this character who has perhaps the most important central role in the opera. Hui Hei's Aida is about the best there is here, her Act III duets coming over well, particularly her duet with a fine Ambrogio Maestri as Amanasro. Without a strong enough Amneris however to hammer home Act IV after the rallying that comes through from the cast and orchestra in Act III, it's all to little avail.

There are no extra features on the Blu-ray, so the single-layer BD25 is generally fine for the two-and-a-half hour opera. The image quality is excellent throughout, 1080i full-HD, with only a little sign of compression artefacts during a couple of faster pans of the camera. The audio tracks are the customary PCM Stereo and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 and there's a decent tone and clarity to both. Subtitles are in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish and Korean. The disc is All Region.

I have several versions of Aida but wanted a blu ray version so that the visuals could match the music. So when this blu ray was released I jumped at it and ordered it immediately, breaking with my usual practice of waiting for some reviews. When it arrived I eagerly put it on but then became increasingly disappointed. The soundtrack did not help as I had to adjust my audio system to try to ease the grating of some of the vocals. I am far from being an opera expert but I have seen this opera many times and I felt the singers timing left a lot to be desired with one or two exceptions. It appeared some cues were missed making it all sound -well to be frank, quite amateurish! Above all though the cast just seemed so miserable! It was if they were just not comfortable with the arrangement or direction. I know it is a sad story but even the jubilant scenes were miserable! After an hour I could not stand it any more and turned it off.

All in all, the worst version of Aida I have ever had the misfortune to experience. My recommendation, don't buy it!