Verdi's "Aida' at the Met

Over the past two seasons I've witnessed a growing gap between what New York critics consider smart and what out-of-town audiences find acceptable. Cinema patrons were bewildered when they saw Philip Glass's Satyagraha in HD live, even though Manhattan aficionados had told them it was a masterpiece. I loved the music but sympathized with audience frustration at the undecipherable Sanskrit libretto and the lack of translated captions.

The disparity was even greater with The Tempest last month. London and New York critics declared that Thomas Ades had composed a masterpiece, yet the folks in the hinterlands hated it.

And with familiar operas, like Tosca, patrons wonder why they're denied recreations of the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle in Rome, or the Castel Sant'Angelo that Puccini specified. They also wonder why the realistic sets that Wagner spelled out for the Ring— and which the Met faithfully replicated from 1989 to 2009— have been scrapped and replaced with high-concept, high-tech rotating planks.

Horses and palm trees

So you can imagine the relief I felt at the happy faces I saw at the cinema last weekend when the Met's new production of Aida was beamed live in HD to hundreds of screens nationwide. Audiences loved the grand singing and the spectacle of horses leading a triumphal parade, massive columns, palm trees and an underground burial vault.

A modern-dress version of Aida was produced by Disney on Broadway, but most opera lovers still want to see the grandiose evocations of ancient Egypt that Verdi had in mind. So Sonja Frisell's 1988 production, with more than 500 people and five horses onstage in the triumphal scene, was a pleasure to see.

TV director Gary Halvorson used many camera angles reminiscent of Busby Berkeley, showing the massive formations from above as well as from ground level. It made for exciting cinema as well as exhilarating opera. The final scene was especially impressive, with the lovers trapped on a lower level while Amneris stood above their tomb on a higher level.

No matinee idols

The singers themselves were comfortably old-fashioned. The Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska, in the title role, has a roundish face and full figure. Olga Borodina, as Amneris, is a mature woman with a plain face. Roberto Alagna, the Radames, has been called a cutie-pie and "Bobby baby" by his web fans, but he's obviously in his late forties— not a matinee idol. No one can accuse the Met of choosing cast members for their looks. And that's fine.

Monastyrska— or "Mona" as she's now known—possesses a real Verdi voice with nice warm tone, a secure high C and ample power to soar over massed crowd scenes. Borodina too is a classy singer with an exciting sound, although she lost control of some of her high notes in the Judgment scene. George Gagnidze made a fine Amonasro: strong, intimidating, unsubtle.

Controversial note

Alagna sang the Egyptian commander Radames in an unusual way, emphasizing the sweet and lyrical part of his character rather than the martial.

His big aria, "Celeste Aida," ends on a high B-flat, which the composer asked to be sung pianissimo and morendo ("dying off"). Most tenors hit the note forte and very few of them are able to diminish it in progress. Arturo Toscanini allowed Richard Tucker to sing the note forte, then drop an octave and repeat it pianissimo on the lower B-flat.

Here, Alagna sang a very soft high note, which came out somewhat falsetto (that is, breathy, without support) but could charitably be labeled "mixed voice" and, after that, descended an octave to repeat it softly. Very controversial.

Through most of the opera, Alagna maintained a vibrant tone, resisting the crooning for which I criticized Marcelo Ólvarez in A Masked Ball. His dramatic phrases in the Nile scene were ringing, although his best singing occurred in the quieter pages of the tomb scene. As always, Alagna's acting was appealing.

Fabio Luisi conducted more effectively here than with A Masked Ball. He handled the huge ensembles with aplomb and remained sensitive to each singer's style without allowing them total license.