Somtow and Harrell’s reproduction of
Verdi’s masterpiece brings tears of joy and endless “Bravos!”
Jonathan Richmond
special to The Nation
Somtow Sucharitkul and Richard Harrell’s mind-blowing “Aida” was a
production for the world stage, put together with a vision and
performed with an inspiration that are rarely found at the greatest
opera houses in the world.
The production, with more than 200 performers, was BIG, but it was also
directed with keen precision, making its gripping three hours fly
by. It was full of colour, pageantry, action, red-blooded
emotions and given one of the most compelling performances one could
ever hope for. Bravo!
Some members of the cast took some time to warm up. I was not
quite sure where things would lead for Aida (Jessica Hsing-an Chen) in
Act I. But as the opera progressed her performance grew in
stature, her musicality used for the most subtle tone-painting,
guaranteed to strike at the essence of the soul. Aida sings of
her country in “O patria mia”, and Chen sang movingly, with woodwinds
cool as the night to lay bare the heat of the heart.
As Aida is told that she is a slaves of the Pharaohs, and not her
father’s daughter, Chen shows the character’s suffering
intensify. Aida is being told by her Ethiopian father to have her
lover, the Egyptian Radames, betray his country, and if Aida’s
emotional wounds are raw here, Chen’s powerful singing and blazing
passions ensured that Radames would fall for her seduction. The
orchestra slowed down, sensuous heartbeats from the strings mated with
the offspring of balmy winds, and the rapture of Chen’s voice ensured
that Radamaes cannot deny her demands for the hero of Egypt to be
treacherous. Bravo!
Todd Geer, as Radames, took rather longer to warm up. His famous
Act I number, “Celeste Aida”, fell flat, and some elements of stiffness
seemed to linger until somewhere in Act II. That is when Geer
managed to forget that he is a 21st-century American and began to live
the triumphs and despairs of the warrior fated to die entombed with
Aida, his country betrayed for love that was to come only with
death. Geer’s lyricism was attractive, and in act IV, his singing
was not only impassioned, but his acting compelling, too. Bravo!
In the opera, Amneris is the impossibly jealous princess who may own
her slave, Aida, but cannot tear Radames’s love away from Aida and to
have it for herself. The singing of Grace Echauri was more than
stunning — love, envy, hatred were played off each other with
directness, deceit, seeming sanity and ultimate madness by a voice of
superb expression.
The silky smooth singing betrayed the guile in Amneris’s heart even as
her character attempts, usuccessfully, to contain the false
sentiment. And yet, what raw pain came from the mouth of Echausi
as Amneris was tortured by the thought of the death of Radames, whose
love would be hers in neither life nor death. This performance
was just brilliant. Bravo!
Ralph Schatzki was Amonasro, a steely character for whom his daughter
is only a means to a military end. Schatzki’s singing was clear,
biting, engaged and alarmingly penetrating. Schatzki’s presence
was a powerful one as he gave Aida a vocal flogging to make her not a
woman freed from Egyptian slavery, but serf enslaved to her father’s
will. Fantastic! Bravo!
Richard Harrell’s production was dazzling. The action was set in
Ayutthaya, rather than Egypt, and the Thai settings worked very well.
A huge chorus (which sang gloriously), dancers and acrobats exuded
boundless energy, but never took the focus from the central drama,
which Harrell directed keenly.
Of course, we knew we were in Thailand when the inevitable bunch of
effeminate boys turned up to expose themselves for the entertainment of
Amneris, but that made sense, too, given the character’s impossible
hormonal cravings. Bravo!
But the biggest bravo goes to the Siam Philharmonic and Somtow.
The hearts of the characters may have come through their voices, but it
was the orchestra that delivered its soul. The playing was clean,
taut, and full of detail.
The famous “Triumphal March” fuelled by high-octane brass sounds was
astonishing, made the more so by the use of offstage brass choirs
(conducted by Trisdee na Patalung), bringing trumpets here, there, and
everywhere. Strings were sharply disciplined to evoke a thousand
feelings, while sensitive to exploring the depths of those emotions,
once exposed. And the winds: just a single flute could
enslave the whole Thailand Cultural Centre to the belief that Verdi’s
extraordinary fiction was in fact true to life.
This was music of a greatness surely more splendid than anything
Bangkok has ever heard before. Bravo!
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