LOC 2009-2010: Verdi's Ernani - of definitely routiniere, concert-in-costume class - deserving of better

Lyric Opera, in addition to Kat’a Kabanova, for most interesting part of their repertoire last season, gave this relatively routine, safe revival of Verdi’s Ernani. In being so safe, it partly missed what Ernani is about, except to present it as period or museum piece.

Lack of contrast between more forceful accents and cantilena during the prelude set the tone just almost too well. Here was leadership slick and efficient, content to just supportively accompany the singers, that did not miss so much in connecting line in Verdi’s music, but what might be any driving passion behind it. In fact, in a derivative sense, it much resembled James Levine’s conducting of Ernani from over twenty-five years ago (as seen on dvd with Leona Mitchell and Pavarotti), but even Levine put more fire into this than has Renato Palumbo. It all still fit within context of an entirely concert in costume Ernani, with generic abstract sets and painstakingly historically accurate costuming – in Samaritani production (not the one Lyric used here) the Met employed.

Salvarote Licitra made an eager bandit Ernani, delivering opening aria, “Come rugiada al cespite” with fine curve and swagger to the line, if some strain on top. He, together with Sondra Radvanovsky, the Elivra, coasted his way through the extended concertato finale to Act One, not wanting to risk more than minimal input of passion into what he was singing, but with still having to bench press high A’s for closing portion of it. The character of Ernani got denied being any challenge to situation at hand. Forza was similarly lacking for Act Two terzetto with Elvira and Silva and confrontation of Elvira right afterwards – contrast for duettino with Elivra ‘Ah! morir” to follow thoroughly insufficient; once into it, Licitra invested the passage with more feeling than had been the norm thus far. The final scene elicited good lyrical shape for easier lines, but caution to avoid excessive strain again ruled the day for what proved too timid a bandit by half.

Sondra Radvanovsky, albeit with uneven placement of breath, elicited fine sense of the cantilena line as Elvira, including for “Ernani, involami”, a little better diction than Leona Mitchell as Elvira as well, but minimal passion. Whereas the ardor for Ernani was there, the enterprising, risk-taking nature of this Verdi heroine got compromised by retiring and flaccid accents, no less than during her reply to Carlo’s first advances to her during Act One, and on brief refrain replacement of cabaletta for Elvira (showing early sign of fatigue by Verdi to write cabalettas when there are available, such as this, better options) right before ‘O sommo Carlo’ during Act Three.

Giacomo Prestia made for a retiring Silva, who had it only so far for the lyrical pages of this, but for instance on ‘No, vendetta’ to Elivra and Ernani, had he tried giving it more voice or vitality, it could have gone hoarse. Palumbo gave Prestia assistance in making waltz step out of Ernani’s oath with which Silva reminds him several times during Act Four – solemn enough in what it then requires of Ernani, one would think. Phillip Gossett reports that in Milan in 1982 there had been rumor that Ghiaurov got spared singing Silva’s cabaletta in Act One for no longer quite having the voice for it. Prestia, less stable than 1982 Ghiaurov, attempted singing it nevertheless. Ghiaurov, especially by today’s standards was still capable of it in 1982. Paul Corona, Kathryn Leemhuis and Rene Barbera ideally acquitted themselves for their three supporting roles.

Best of all in this cast was Boaz Daniel as the king, Carlo. Carlo’s first wooing of Elvira, outrage of whom made flaccid by La Rad, combined lyricism and heft very well. Sense of being goaded, treated duplicitously by Silva (‘Lo vedremo di ribelli’) had good force, feel of menace. Palumbo undercut Daniel for ‘Lo vedremo, veglio audace’ by breezily streamlining its accompaniment, but Daniel held his own with fine legato and strong marking of text especially toward cadences, with Prestia in obbligato as Silva to Carlo fitting in well with Silva in so obsequious mode as occurs here. “Vieni, meco, sol di rose” alone for Boaz Daniel came off a bit heavy, but with Palumbo cutting its repeat and choral interlude before vis-à-vis the libretto being cut illogically creates an imbalance. Silva’s loyalists forever miss what is due them musically out of choral text that the king’s retinue gets privileged to have alone. As proper both Levine and Palumbo affect being, what could have ever authorized this cut?

Boaz Daniel combined well sense of destiny with scheming tone for start to Act Three, and dignified both ‘Oh de verd’anni miei’ and ‘O sommo Carlo’ with secure line and release with even, oaken timbre. However, accompaniment for the latter again got streamlined by Palumbo to extent it might make one surmise that Verdi missed writing in extra accents, tenuti for this music, this moment especially, to receive the gravitas it needs. Boaz Daniel, for the big Verdi baritone parts, does not have quite the full range of color and expression, but has good size of voice, the secure technique and intelligent musical and dramatic sense to pull it off. Anticipation of hearing Daniel as Carlo made listening in worth it, if little else. He shows considerable readiness for all but several or so biggest Verdi roles for baritone - even potentially as a fine Iago in Verdi’s Otello.

Palumbo paralleled Levine well in limning a beautifully played bass clarinet solo for start to Act Three just fine, but so much of this Ernani was flaccid, lacking in necessary vitality, bloodless. Choral preparation by Donald Nally proved fine, but at times undercut by stiff accenting and even on occasion clipping from the podium. The four beats marked for the central Congiura of Act Three got cut down to very nearly three, denying opening to it more than anything else a feeling of mystery. Self-conscious attention to stylistic genre of this music typified Palumbo’s efforts to point things steered clear of invoking any Risorgimento fire here – note streamlining of the Trovatore accents of Elvira and Ernani’s unison refrain response to Carlo during Act One. Just as fatally, this Ernani emerged free of any ideas at all of his own as to how it should go.

I can not fail to again find inclusion of Silva’s Act One cabaletta insipid, its dragging of the dramatic argument at hand, and not fitting at all well anything else in its having been copied and pasted over by a basso, Marini. He wanted it not only for 1842 Barcelona revival of Verdi’s first opera Oberto, but for their Ernani as well two years later. For performances, copies of Ernani that predate the critical edition that very much mostly Philip Gossett and others helped painstakingly prepare, there are presumably only orchestral parts, with winds, brass, percussion added in for the Ricordi edition (with what errors it may have therein) with preceding cadence for Silva’s cabaletta included and nothing for the parallel segue into the much more forceful and dramatically cogent recitative to instead immediately follow it (starting with ‘Uscite!’).

Gossett then made the highly questionable claim that Riccardo Muti, in excising the cabaletta (‘Infin che un brando vindice’), used the Ricordi-included cadence for the cabaletta, yet without the cabaletta. Could have Muti realized his mistake, intervened with who did the sound for filming the new Ronconi production that marked Muti’s debut at La Scala and EMI Classics (that picked this up live) as well to cut the revised cadence on dominant chord for F Minor (C Major) and cut and paste in its place instead the original that clearly ends on tonic chord in F Minor? I doubt it.

Whatever the case, the heckling of Muti while the music played on, ‘Il cabaletta, filologo!, Gossett reported, got picked up on neither dvd nor compact disc. What did get recorded then had to have been during a subsequent performance to the opening, so I still find it doubtful that there may have been any changes made for subsequent performances. If not, most likely it is not, then Gossett has perhaps hoped that in reckoning that Muti used the Ricordi edition – it likely not being possible to have done differently at the time – we might have overlooked, for passage of two measures, on what chord Muti had things land – and necessary adjustment to half a measure of continuing sixteenths in violins leading into it.

Where Muti slipped, we all can agree with Gossett, is in having publicly for La Corriere della Sera perhaps made excessive claim of having achieved philological purity in addressing all this. Where Gossett also may slip is in revealing a patronizing attitude, harmonizing well with Milano loggionisti, in taking a very patronizing attitude toward Luca Ronconi’s production (with admittedly expensive sets by Ezio Frigerio). It is absolutely brilliant, even with its mixture of costuming styles from different periods of history. The philosophical import of it, the intensity and vitality it draws out of its cast, especially from Domingo and Bruson, but also from Freni, Ghiaurov and supporting cast is all riveting.

No physical perils face any of the cast, of which a few people including Gossett have made excessive emphasis, to parallel an Andrei Serban production of Lucia di Lammermoor to have surfaced once, or at least equally bad or worse the Zambello production of also Lucia the Met back in 1993 had to immediately mothball. The video quality, in being up to date or not, may not be the most brilliant of any dvd’s I own, but I must even almost shamelessly reveal my own bias to report here that it is the most brilliant staging of a Verdi opera I have probably seen yet in any medium. Apart from Il Trittico perhaps, there is no Ronconi production to be preferred over this.

Dr. Philip Gossett (University of Chicago) was the excellent guest for one intermission, tacitly helping make Lyric a referendum on how bad it is for the Meg and Ira show to have replaced what we could still honestly call the Met intermission features. He got close to addressing – with me all ears – the Silva cabaletta philological issue at hand, but shied away from it, content with providing listeners the Saturday Ernani was on with other very fine musical and historical insights. Gossett is honest and thorough in citing the cabaletta’s inclusion in Ricordi without it existing in any of the other extant editions of the opera. I will make further effort to look into the controversy even beyond how he has addressed it in his recent, otherwise never to be doubted book Divas and Scholars.

Let us not forget the lifelong, selfless service Dr. Gossett has provided us in terms of helping revive unjustly neglected Rossini operas, musical preparation, and most of all very fine, extensive editing work that we could have at least ninety-nine percent of the time the best editions possible of these and of so much else. We all owe Gossett a debt we may never be able to pay for the love he has shown the art and all of us so interested in it. Any comment I may have made amiss, I will return here to edit in due time.

Best singing heard on this broadcast belonged to Giulietta Simionato, who other than perhaps very early on had no part in Ernani, but nobody has any doubt her fully deserving the loving retrospective Lyric provided during first intermission feature for Ernani. There is nobody quite worthy to replace her today, for the beautiful voice she possessed, her love for the art, for then only after that and her love for her colleagues, her love for taking good care of her voice, not to mention, remembered by others, sense of humor. I can only stand to envy anyone who might have known her in person at any time, but her recorded legacy lives on.

MET: A special helping of broken chinoiserie - Hui He in slipshod re-run of Verdi's Aida 03.04.10 An aside on PBS re-airing of fall Turandot.

It is with the second heaviest Verdi role with which Hui He of Xi’an, China, graduate of Shanghai Conservatory made her Met and Met broadcast debut. She got heard as Tosca in a concert (semi-staged) performance, broadcast with the New York Philharmonic, approximately a year ago, Lorin Maazel conducting.

The part of Aida is versatile in its demands - elusive this way. Hui He made this much clear. It was just partly a case of nerves that obstructed her being able to start well lyrically, for which she placed back too far - to be careful. It thus made for cloudy tone production from her entrance on stage through end of trio with Amneris and Radames. She gained slightly more confidence for the large ensemble and opening of ‘Ritorna, vincitor’ to follow; her tone better opened out and more of a character began to emerge. Persistent pitch problems then began to compromise line; she lacked quite the control to scale voice down where, such as to start “L’inana parola’, the line is marked pianissimo.

There is attractive color here, for instance a smoky colored lower register, but pitch problems at the break and above killed her first go at ‘Numi, pieta’, that fortunately she repeated much better to end Act Two, Scene One. Gentle imploring of Amneris for news of Radames conveyed fine intimacy as same music taken more slowly during ‘Ritorna vincitor’ had in her previous scene. She then however opted for thickening her sound a little much, making intonation suffer once more, this time for her well felt despondent entreaties for mercy to a threatening rival ('Ah! pieta ti prenda').

‘O patria mia’, starting off the Nile Scene, revealed the effect of some wear and tear of singing Aida on essentially a lyric instrument. The right lyrical impetus was present, and feeling for emotions of the character, but for sake of maintaining control through some of the long cantilena in this aria, tone began to turn whitish under pressure and the high C just about misfired completely. Hui He then managed to quickly regain poise for by and large a quite successful Nile duet with Amonasro, with especially some fully spun out lines to close it, that she then made quite affecting. Through ‘Pur ti riveggo’ with Radames, she also revealed well toughness of the slave girl, alongside the vulnerability. Intonation again became for a few phrases very hit-and-miss for Hui He as the second big duet to include her required so much scaling down of the voice. Most revealing of having succumbed to effect of having had run across some questionable training was the reach-from-behind approach to ‘O, terra, addio’ which broke apart the line and again killed intonation, whereas she had started the Tomb Scene well.

Slight glibness apart, including through ‘L’inno nostro di morte’ in this final scene, a real character as Aida started to emerge, in such quasi-heroic attempt at it, but with so much faulty technique to just simply got excessively in the way. Not encumbered by such heavy demands, here is a lovely instrument, but, one would hope, not one to be quickly ruined soon by plethora of Tosca’s, Aidas, Amelia’s, etc. It would be good to report here that, from veterans of Met and other big house Aida’s, there might be some example for Hui He to follow Saturday. However, all to encounter here were only faint to mediocre reminders of what Aida, singing it, is about.

Salvatore Licitra was the Radames, appearing all eager, naïve, ambitious, guileless, stupid as any Radames should for ‘Se guerrier io fossi.’ All this was fine and well, just as long as Lictira did not have to reach much for the break or anything above it. What hint of anything like heroism that Radames should convey, such as from for instance a Bergonzi, fell seriously by the wayside. Licitra did manage to plan here and conserve energy better than he did last year in Munich with Gatti, singing Radames again, but still several high notes emerged as raw, even here. Clipping of ‘Nel fiero anelito’, inelegant lunging for long sustained F’s in Celesta Aida’ and poutish behavior for cabaletta to the Nile scene duet ultimately contributed to one anti-heroic Radames indeed.

In fact, one would have hoped that the priests, others in charge, once betrayal of the Egyptian forces has occurred, might have paused to consider how perhaps little of a factor Radames might have been in securing victory for which he has just been lauded. Once having done so, it might have been easy to release Radames as unworthy to the cause from the get-go to the Ethiopians to join his Aida in smelling i freschi valli of new jungle home down south. We could have then had a happy ending and no Act Four.

Dolora Zajick, for what seems the umpteen hundredth time - wear and tear on her voice to show for it - was the Amneris. She joined Licitra in giving, even solidifying well the following impression of lets say ninety minutes before curtain, loud stretch and yawn, ‘time to get derriere down to Lincoln Center, put on the Egyptian, and give it all once more what they came for..’ In other words, for the most part, other than to phone Amneris in, the cause was lost. ‘Hmm - how shall we nuance ‘Ah, vieni’ today? Let’s perhaps place each succeeding one even still a little further back from previous one this time.’ How imaginative! What extra gilding Zajick gave them did however succeed in derailing intonation. Zajick comfortably coasted through the ‘Trema, vil schiava’s’ of Act Two, Scene One, then after nice pause for extra half a second from Armiliato, indulged us of her chest voice on ‘Del tuo destino’, that starts and remains comfortably lower.

Marco Armiliato gave Zajick a fairly breezy tempo for cabaletta in the Judgment scene, instead of abetting her clipping it, such as happened earlier here in Houston. The forza for it still got compromised quite a bit. For arioso to precede trial of Radames, Zajick varied between good garden variety verismo and giving the princess’s special voicing of desperation for hope a few shimmers of real insight. There is still indeed an Amneris here, even quite the voice for it, though with chest register more separate from the rest than before, and one looking as though en route to shadow of her former glorious self.

Carlo Colombara made the lyrically achieved Ramfis, achieving proper gravitas and menace for some pages - temple scene with Radames for instance - and compromised, reach-from-above intonation for the rest of it. The profile for what once has been a very fine voice for the part is still there, but some edges now begin to show. Invocations of Radames’s name eventually went completely sharp. Stefan Kocan played the somewhat nasal, Slavic toned King of Egypt quite firmly, but also with minor intonation problems.

Carlo Guelfi energetically fletcherized a bit to put forth a fully rounded Amonasro across the footlights. Other than for several key lines, for instance at the end of the Nile duet with Aida, top notes were unsteady and sense of legato patchy at best. Clearly what continues mostly a character-baritone profile of the embattled and enslaved Ethiopian king emerged here. My expectations for Guelfi were lowest of all, but in context of this cast, he hardly did poorly at all. All three lowest male voices in this cast sounded best in negotiating exchange of recitative toward end of the Triumphal Scene, following Guelfi’s unwritten doubling of Hui He on all instead of part of her long second phrase to repeat what Amonasro just had in full to himself for ‘Ma, tu Re.’ He sounded, non legato, two dynamic levels louder than she did.

More heroic sounding than anybody else in the cast was the Messenger of Diego Torres, perhaps the one unqualified success here. Could he have been a double for Licitra? What could have things been like, had he been able to fill in? The Priestess (Elisabeth DeShong) however was a case, all the way around, of blatant disregard. Nobody, from the podium to backstage showed any evidence of care for how the music is marked, in terms of dynamics, balances, placement, or anything else. DeShong blasted her way through this at an unyielding fortissimo – not making enviable at all where the new Chinese soprano may have stood within grand scheme of things.

After cancellation of Paolo Cargnani just slightly within one week of this run, came on Marco Armiliato to conduct this instead. Heavily misplaced accents in segue off the Judgment Scene duet for one revealed that, for Armiliato, there was nothing other than perhaps cosmetic that needed fixing since Gatti, the far more glorified (and more willful) routiniere who conducted this last fall.

The affectation, mannerisms with Armliato up there in Gatti’s place was at times exactly the same, as I have heard in a Munich Aida and more painfully the La Scala Don Carlo. The Met chorus most often sounded thin and unfocused. Strings were a bit ragged, even for prelude to Act One and mezzo-forte for what should be the magical opening of the Nile scene. Many phrase endings were loud and crude, often to a truly unwarranted extent, i.e. toward end of ‘Ma, tu Re’ during the Triumphal Scene for stretto right before closing phrase. This was shouted to extent that brief line of chord progression therein could have been mistaken for writing out of Utrenja or Moses und Aaron instead.

Obsequious yielding to his singers on stage, when in violation of Verdi’s rhythms, came across highly insipid. Dance episodes during the first two acts were clunky - the dance of the priestesses flat-footed and loud. Amneris’s slaves, even as looking forward to a few special privileges in lieu of the day being prep for her nuptials with Radames, sounded tired and disengaged – with loud, clunky harp to accompany them. What the Met orchestra and chorus has been able to offer before in terms of refinement under Levine and others seemed to have exited for left field entirely. The grandeur of such an occasion, to see Aida at the Met, with chorus sounding at times so thin, went almost entirely missing. Ira Siff’s comparative evaluation of this cast - for it to have been just as good for us in our own day as Toscanini’s of the 1908-09 season (Destinn, Louise Homer, Caruso) had been for that time, Verdi’s Aida notwithstanding - hit a new low.

Desecration from earlier this Met season of again a true masterpiece - what has so often now been left bowdlerized, with still the Toscanini butchered Alfano ending to it, was on display on PBS this evening. When bare-chested Pu-Tin-Pao came on stage, in the stage directions, for the Liu, I thought he could have been headed for either the somewhat raw sounding Turandot (Maria Guleghina) or Calaf (Marcello Giordani) instead, for what had happened to the shape of so many of Puccini’s phrases, pitch, etc. Andris Nelsons (Met debut), with deft touch for some of Puccini’s sonorities, made something close to muzak of the rest. - in place of ability for the modernism of Puccini’s score to make it to the fore. After shaky ensemble for passacaglia to flaccidly end Act One, one then picked up real garden variety Tommy Dorsey waltz of just about the entire Riddle Scene to end Act Two.

In Berlioz’s day, should this Turandot have occurred in Beijing then, someone would have had to step in to save even Nelsons, lest he not have been able to leave Tian’anmen with ears and nose intact after likely encounter with Pu-Tin Pao himself Otherwise, what would we be able to make today of what Berlioz wrote on the subject of penalties for desecrators? The Liu (Marina Poplavaskaya) practically or artistically emerged the victor of the day, even with her own moments of questionable intonation. Pu-Tin-Pao still perhaps had score to settle with her - for her execrable Elisabetta in Don Carlo weeks earlier in London.

The Zeffirelli, with the three ministers doing ‘this is what we do to look Chinese for the tourists’ act, looked as silly as any production of his has ever looked, all the excessive dancing around and posing with fans hardly less. Nelsons took the same bad cut to the ministers’ scene opening Act Two as usually taken. No gravitas was able to be found for anything, least of all either the tone of Samuel Ramey or Charles Anthony as senior figures on stage, or as to what Puccini’s final opera could have meant. It would have hardly mattered if the highly relevant Berio finale of today could have been performed. With both the staging and Nelson’s mix of chartreuse into Puccini’s sonorities, even for Puccini composed like he did – the cause would have most likely been lost anyway. What Turandot might offer in terms of grandeur got compromised by road-show quality work (including in number on stage) from the Met chorus.

Bavarian St Opera Aida: a la Gatti step - Egyptians, Verdi in flats

Barbara Frittoli was originally to have sung in this production of Verdi’s Aida, but whether it was the heaviness of the title role for a lyric, the lack of any clear beat to happen from the podium, or confusion surrounding the staging (by Christof Nel) in question that led her to backing out may still remain an open question. On paper then, that is still including Frittoli, this appeared to be a somewhat promising outing with Verdi’s Aida, on terms of its three principal singers. Lyric bass Giacomo Prestia has had some success before with Ramfis at other houses too.

Kristin Lewis, soprano from Little Rock, Arkansas, with certainly some attractive qualities, took Frittoli's place. There is a warm, thick molasses to the sound here that is quite attractive and should continue to help her find work in more lyric repertoire than the title role of Aida. I certainly hope she has not added Tosca or Amelia in Ballo to her repertoire as of yet. Lewis is said to have a degree of acting ability that apparently, according to one other writer who has written in, said that the rest of this cast lacked. Lewis’s first entrance, in trio with Amneris and Radames, a good ways already before becoming necessary for a lyric, involved quite a degree of pushing the voice - evident too during “Su del Nilo" several minutes later how flat she could become above the staff.

Most worrisome, for singer I estimate to be in her late twenties, was the pushing down on not only low notes to reach them, but also doing so on pitches around the break. The perils of doing so, for sake of the longevity of a career just starting out especially, should be blatantly obvious by now. She certainly won some sympathy for the part, but also had to stick at times to coasting through things, glib expression should any going nearby get rough. “O patria mia” certainly suited Lewis better than did “Ritorna vincitor,” but high C and high A at the end, though in tune, were unsupported. From what clip of this Aida I have seen, there are certainly some fine dramatic and musical instincts here that Lewis presents - all threatened however by taking on an assignment that is too big for her voice and too demanding of more secure technique.

Ekaterina Gubanova made overall a lyric Amneris, fairly even across her range, and with the expected Slavic coloring along with the rest. She still effectively managed to convey some of the imperious manner with which Amneris should carry herself, and if not rising to the most vocally resplendent tragic heights of inspiration during the Judgment scene, certainly did not eschew musical and dramatic involvement. Through several of the most dramatic moments in the part, she relied heavily upon Gatti to provide the clipping of note values she might have needed to keep lines she was singing sustainable, including her threatening lines to Aida during first scene of Act Two. While on that, her “Vieni, vieni, amor mio”’s starting Act Two became curiously stuck, tremulous around the break – a needed fix for which Gatti did not show much ability to come to her rescue.

Salvatore Licitra displayed the lyricism for Radames, along with some of the nobility, plus about all the guilelessness, romantic ardor, naivete, stupidity true of Radames as well. “Celeste Aida” had good sustained line, but through which Licitra coasted his way, toward being able to make some still strained B-Flats; at the temple of Phtah, he managed to go sharp several times in his duet with Prestia. Good characterization persisted through the Nile scene, but Licitra could not hide bench-pressing he started engaging in even for the slower, more lyrical part of Nile duet with Aida. Lewis, having to go about its cabaletta in ‘hail Mary’ fashion, provided suitable distraction unfortunately for what trouble Licitra had here as well. The fatigue for what is really not a very long evening fully set in for Licitra by the Tomb Scene – in which past his sensitive opening phrases to it, he emitted some raw sounds. It has been said that this guy can hardly act his way out of a paper bag. One does not evaluate a Radames so much on that as being able to sing the part - one that sits quite often uncomfortably in the middle of the voice. One need only look back to Carlo Bergonzi, however, to know how well it can be done.

Christian Van Horn, apart from several doubtful low notes, provided a very sturdy, stalwart King, with pleasing dark timbre to voice that hopefully will not (too soon) encounter being forced onto assignments too heavy.. Angela Brewer, with voice placed too forward, was found to slough off phrase endings and unsteady as the Priestess. Kenneth Roberson (Messenger) was fine, except for being rushed off his lines by Gatti.

Audibly painful high F’s, far placed back wobbly unsteady tone characterized most of all the Amonasro during the Triumphal Scene, that for which no amount of incisiveness from Gatti was able to compensate during “Quest’assissi” - starting point for enslaved foreign monarch. Marco Vratogna then had us encounter overt touch of sprechstimme for the entirety of one phrase during “Ma tu, re.” The slightly long held acuti that start off lines in the violent part of his Nile duet with Aida indicated possible membership in the Fiorenza Cedolins school for singing acuti a whole tone lower than pitch - possibly learned from last year’s Don Carlo at La Scala – should real pitch not be attainable. Both singers involved here, as assisted the best they could by Gatti, coasted through the Nile scene duet with only just as much as they were able to give it.

Giacomo Prestia started Ramfis well, with writing lyrical enough to handle, but on “Noi t’invochiam” during the temple scene, a repeated pitch on low B-flat for several measures changed four or five times over span of three measures. It must be, given how slithery this Ramfis was – including on calling out Radames’s name during the Judgment scene - that here perhaps in this staging as having been raised in the backwoods of Tennessee as priest (or minister) who has spent a little too much time at his contribution to the snake-handling division of his vocation for attaining top of the ladder. The worried tone that this Ramfis developed for his third calling out for Radames to respond to his indictment seemed to indicate that should there be present defense counsel among priests, he must have fallen asleep on the job. We can leave it to Calixto Bieito or Peter Konwitschny as to how to find more clever way to change the plot to Act Four.

As for Gatti, this Aida was not quite the disaster which Don Carlo at La Scala had been. That can be taken as pretty much a given. Aida is forty-five minutes shorter or so than the four-act Don Carlo - with duet between Carlo and Phillip that Gatti restored for it during the prison scene. That is the good news. However, this was more not so much an interpretation of Aida as a marginalization of Verdi’s score and of its most distinctive tendencies found therein. Tempo relationships were frequently questionable, as for anything to make dramatically or musically cumulative sense. Gatti's ability to draw some tinta out of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester was admirable, except for streamlining some of it away and thus leaving so much relatively undefined.

The Triumphal scene benefited by not being overstated, certainly; Gatti shaped the difficult ‘Ma, tu Re’, to have included such an unsteady Amonasro, circumspectly. Accenting however in the framing choruses for the big scene was found to often go awry and at times in what made accents sound as though they would do so at just about always the most awkward times too - with such a casual step through it all as well. Contours to Gatti’s work for the second half of Aida sounded more secure than first half. Partly due however to not having sufficient voices, the Nile Scene went by as aone of the most anticlimactic renditions of it I have yet heard. As for the dances in Aida, rhythmic shape was slightly lacking for Priestesses at the temple, pacing casual for the Moorish slaves in Amneris’s boudoir. Following where there was no acoustical spacing for whatever reason between trumpet led sections of the triumphal march came uneven leadership overall of the ballet, with vulgar jerking about of first F Minor episode therein.

Choral work overall veered between acceptable to mediocre, sounding ‘glee club’ to start the Triumphal Scene. One issue at stake was the uneven, flaccid beat the chorus would get quite frequently from the podium, and also their awkward placement on the stage - with violated sounding priestesses during temple scene for being placed too forward.

On program I do not find led very well, concerning issues that affect our country and politics - (ABC) This Week with Stephy - I learned a new word that could indeed become quite useful at times, if used sparingly. The topic at hand was ‘breakdown in discipline’ (quoth Ed Gillespie) during Hillary Clinton’s visit to the Congo last week – to what is - pause for breath here, i.e. how evil - ‘a male-dominated world’ over there. Well, yes, with frequent rape, genital mutilizations, other forms of gender violence, it sure must be bad, as Donna Brazile mentioned. All this was during an episode she as pure aside admittedly quoted Ronald Reagan - trumpeting a very accomplished Hillary Clinton’s prerogative to show a little emotion.

First of all, what verb should be conjugated here? I do not know, but the new word found above, can it be found in an Ebonics dictionary? I just wonder how legitimate I may be to attempt using this word myself. Somehow it morphs together two verbs with which we are all familiar – ‘to utilize’ and ‘to mutilate.’

Why am I so off topic here? Is it some knee-jerk reaction I have to watching priests on stage for little I have seen of this each throwing one among many strapping youth head first over their shoulders – I certainly should hope not resulting in any type(s) of mutilization. I wonder too about the white slaves in this production – as Aida Americana - that from the appearance of things, does seem to have at least a few clever ideas. As these get sorted out and any unsalvageable be found among new breed of indentured, do they then have to be submitted before the ‘death panels’ that Sarah Palin has told us exist now, supervised from Washington DC?

How about instead utilizing the new word to apply to an insecure podium for partly undue accommodation that results in mutilating or in effect mutlilizating Verdi’s rhythms? It happened frequently here, and (supposedly) for benefit of more than just Miss Lewis. Gubanova needed help in the cabaletta to the Judgment scene duet with Radames (as did Dolora Zajick, Gatti’s Eboli last year in Don Carlo – also when she sang Amneris here last time in Houston with Carlo Rizzi). ‘Ritorna vincitor’ got all kinds of help as well – most notably “Numi, pieta” close to waltz time - in three-four.

Gatti himself hardly ever needed any excuse as to what a specific singer on stage might need at any given time. I just naively happened to think I was tuning in to Bavarian State Opera of Munich instead of second cast from New York City Opera or at Houston Grand Opera, but after all if the inherent right is to show a little emotion – whether in diplomacy on world or on world operatic stage, then ‘so be it.’ At least, to answer someone else who has written in, it has to have been more comfy to do so in flats instead of heels. That at least Ms. Brazile would know.