Ah, I jump out of bed early on a Saturday morning, when the sun is shining, and it’s just a superb fall day.
I get myself dressed quickly, and head for the darkened confines of the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre to spend four hours in front of a screen, before leaving there feeling exalted.
What’s wrong with me? Indoors on a day like that?
“But it was Aida,” I reply.
Most of my readers probably have sloped off to read more thrilling copy by my great colleagues, Kevin Rothbauer, Sarah Simpson, and Robert Barron, not to mention Andrea Rondeau and Tom Paterson, but the 20 of you who are left know what I’m talking about.
La diva deliciosa, Anna Netrebko, was singing the role of the Ethiopian slave girl in Verdi’s opera Aida in Live from the Met: in HD last Saturday. She was joined by two other excellent singers, Anita Rachvehishvili — try to say that first thing in the morning — and Aleksandrs Antonenko as Amneris and Rhadames respectively.
We — the hundred or so opera fans who got ourselves down then for the 9:55 a.m. call-out — knew what it was all about, and that it was more than worth our time to be there.
“Oh, it’s opera!” I can just about hear two or three more of you slipping away on tiptoe.
It wasn’t only opera. It was “grand opera on opera’s grandest stage,” according to our lovely onscreen hostess, soprano Isabel Leonard, who will be performing in Marnie at the Met this season.
The Met is famous for its mounting of Aida. We got a tour of the sky-high backstage area where an army of workers were manhandling the enormous sets. We enjoyed interviews with all the stars, and even a couple of newcomers thrilled to be making their Met debut in Aida. We went down into the catacombs of the Met Archives to hear about great Aidas of the past, and, of course, we got a full view of the inside of the magnificent theatre.
And we also got to enjoy the opera.
You can call Verdi’s Aida a warhorse, a potboiler, or other unflattering names applied to something that’s just too popular for words. But it’s like the Eiffel Tower: everybody just loves it because it’s lovable.
The music is great, the story is easy enough to follow in a foreign language, and, from the Metropolitan Opera, the singing will be super.
Beyond that.
Soprano Netrebko’s performance of Aida is being compared to that of the legendary Leontyne Price, who reigned supreme in the role in the early 1960s, and, who, I must add, was probably known to almost everyone in the audience at the theatre Saturday morning.
I have to admit that in the Cowichan Valley at least, opera lovers seem to come from an older demographic. I felt right at home as I took my seat to enjoy the show.
Have you ever seen those cartoons where a car starts off like a rocket, with the driver practically blown back through the front seat by the thrust?
I felt like that when the singing began.
Now, I admit to being a fidgety sort of person, who’s always shuffling back and forth, but during Aida I hardly moved. I was pinned to my seat by the beauty of what I was hearing.
As I’ve said before: grand opera is an athletic event. If you can get up to those high notes and present the emotion, it doesn’t matter how old you are or what you look like. (Pavarotti, the famous 10-ton tenor is a great example. Using only his wonderful voice, he could make you believe he was a bone-thin, starving artist or struggling musician, or whatever. His barely being able to move onstage never entered the equation.)
Aida is an opera in the grand tradition where singers stand and sing. Beyond a few breaks involving some lithe dancers there was very little physical action onstage. It all happened in that magical space that somehow connected us directly with the singers.
Amneris became just a young girl in love, jealously finding she has a rival in her best friend, Aida. Rhadames was a young captain, hoping for promotion, so he could then convince the powers that be to free his girlfriend, Aida, from slavery so he could marry her.
We all spent four hours in the theatre, entranced, based on just that. There’s nothing glamorous, no food or wine, no chic boxed lunches, no pre-event drinks in the board room.
But it was more than enough. I still find myself humming some of the music today (Tuesday) as I write this. I don’t often get the chance to fit in a whole opera on a Saturday but now I’m waiting eagerly the next time.
You should go. Take a chance. If you’ve never been to an opera, I’d recommend La Traviata on Saturday, Jan. 5 or Carmen on Saturday, Feb. 9. These are two other “warhorse” shows that, like Aida, are immensely popular with everyone. You never know till you try.
