Egypt at its Grandest

It was appropriate that I would look out the Eyrie window on Monday and see the Egyptian god Anubis floating down the East River with his entourage.  Anubis knew that Greg and I would be transported on Friday night to Thebes and Memphis (Egypt, not Tennessee) to witness the tribulations of the Ethiopian slave princess, Aida, who is torn between her love for Radames and her love for her native country.  Radames, true to grand opera form, is loved by Aida's mistress, Amneris, who is also the daughter of the Pharaoh.  Thus a standard love triangle is set amid the fantastic Egyptian monuments and glorious colors of turquoise, lapis and gold.  The more important "coloring" in this late Verdi opera is the magnificent scoring known for its use of local "color" in which Verdi use chromatic and contrapuntal themes to evoke the local sounds of Egypt.  Think for example of the melodic diminished 3d in the chorus in Act I Scene ii.  (Ha! The only reason I can write this pretentiously is that I'm sitting here referring to The Grove Book of Operas.)  But it would be nice to be able to explain more why I love the music of Aida and to find a way to describe the exquisite music.

Amazingly, I think I know the entire score of Aida but we've only seen it performed once when we were on our poor student honeymoon in 1971 and saw the tourist production at the Baths of Caracella.  Years of listening to the Leontyne Price CD have firmly embedded the score in my head, but I think it is also easy to remember because the score matches the plot so well.  Last night's performance at the Met was truly Grand Opera-the staging was dramatic and evocative.  It recalled the wonderful ruins, particularly of Abu Simbel, that we saw in our 1996 trip to Egypt. ( In fact, Greg may have "seen" more of these Egyptian monuments last night than he did at Abu Simbel where we was struck with the curse of the Pharoah and violently ill.)  I'm disappointed that none of my usual sources can supply a good photo of last night's production because the sets were fantastic.  Two scenes visually stood out:  Radames is given his marching orders in the Temple of Vulcan and the handmaidens moved slowly and deliberately from the altar to the floor.  Suddenly all those murals and heiroglyphics of ancient Egyptians came to life for me.  The Act II, scene ii staging of the triumphal march into the public scale was filled with hundreds of extras and several horses. Alexei Ratmansky choreographed the ballet to suggest ancient folk dancing which I liked.  But of course, the most important element-the music-was also well served by lead singers.   Radames was performed by Salvatore Licitra whom Greg also saw as Calaf in Turandot in January and Dolora Zajick sang Amneris. This performance was the Met debut of a new Chinese soprano, Hui He, in the title role of Aida.

We'll have an additional exposure to Egypt on Monday evening when we join Dr. Yassin El-Ayouti for dinner.  Yassin was introduced to us by Father Bob of Cornell Catholic Community and he is the founder of Sunsglow a center for Global Training in the Rule of Law.  Greg will be participating on the Sunsglow Board at future meetings.  And what was Anubis doing on the East River?  He was announcing a new King Tut exhibit opening in Times Square later in April.    Ironically all this exposure to Egypt comes at a time when I've decided not to go to Egypt and Israel with Greg this summer, so the opera and the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum will have to satisfy my interest in the kingdoms of the Nile.