Aida in Basel: Not just a river in Egypt

Calixto Bieto’s new production of Aida at the Theater Basel poses a basic question: “is love possible in a society based on remorseless exploitation and extreme inequality?” (I quote his program note.) As you would expect from a warm and fuzzy guy like Bieito, the answer is, “nope.” But while we are treated to the usual collage of brutality--bloody naked prisoners being kicked, etc.--this production is both politically astute and, perhaps surprisingly, does a great job telling the story.  It’s not easy to watch, but pure brilliance, if you ask me.

Verdi-Ghislanzoni, Aida. Theater Basel, 9/10/10. New production directed by Calixto Bieito, sets by Rebecca Ringst, costumes Ingo Krügler, lights Hermann Münzer. Conducted by Maurizio Barbacini with Olga Romanko (Aida), Sergej Khomov (Radamès), Michelle DeYoung (Amneris), Alfred Walker (Amonasro).

The setting is a stadium-like space in present-day Basel, as indicated by the locally relevant ads on the walls and a few moments of Swiss kitsch (I wonder how the music critic of the Basler Zeitung felt about writing about this one). But the stadium is purely metaphoric, a place for the chorus to wildly cheer and join in the spectacle of cruelty that unfolds in its center. They are incited by a fanatical cheerleader painted in the colors of the Egyptian flag, and follow a religion that involves reading the entrails of dead animals (this is realistic and kinda gross). They throw crumbs at the Ethiopian prisoners, and at one point all don Egyptian headdresses like crazed Cheeseheads. Society’s outcasts are represented by two solo figures of opposite extremes: a marauding (Catholic) priest and a frantically dancing drag queen. In the Triumphal March, Aida is forcibly and unhappily converted to Western dress.  Aida’s grand opera trappings of choruses and ballets give Bieito plenty of space to work this stuff while still keeping a close eye on the unfolding plot. Radamès is an ordinary politician in a suit, Amneris a rich mean girl.

Aida, King, Messenger, Amonasro, Amneris, and a symbolic blind woman

Aida represents the Muslim immigrant population in Europe (headscarf, modest dress, at first). Her presentation as a shy, withdrawn, at first barely noticeable figure (abused by Amneris and her father alike) is completely different than any other Aida I have seen. While I’m worried that it embraces a whole different set of clichés about Muslim women it works spectacularly well in the context of the drama, giving her a vulnerability and lonely pathos that more stately Aidas could never dream of, and makes her and Radamès’s love seem more transgressive. In fact, this points to something else interesting about this production: Bieito is not very interested in racial, religious, or cultural difference as such--as indicated by Amonasro's abusive ways, all people are basically the same, bad--but rather in the class and power structures in which they are situated, and the reality of having a society with an oppressed, alienated underclass.  “O patria mia” seems less a gesture of patriotism than a prayer for escape.  Only love inspires sympathy and kindness.

Verdi’s score is overflowing with the jingles and augmented seconds of exotic music, but as an Orientalist opera Aida is a puzzle, because it’s hard to decide what constitutes “us” and what “them.” Bieito tosses the exoticism-as-sexy-Other thing altogether. Exotic music usually represents something debased, less human, but it’s also undeniably exciting and enjoyable for us, the listeners. Here the music represents the degraded, primitive inhumanity of our own society, and the sadistic pleasure found in it.  Like I said, Bieito’s no optimist. There is one (brilliant) exception to the no exoticism rule: in the Dance of the Priestesses, Amneris and her various European companions get into exotic drag and do a belly dance for the men, skewering all sorts of cultural appropriation in one short number.

Michelle DeYoung as Amneris and Sergej Khomov as Radamès

If you’re thinking some of this sounds familiar, well, yeah. Bieito owes a large debt to Hans Neuenfels’s 1981 Frankfurt production, whose most famous moment was in the triumphal march, when the set and assembled chorus resembled a mirror of the opera house’s audience. Bieito's mirror is a nightmare funhouse one, but the principle is similar.  The conductor can not be easily seen in the Basel theater's deep pit, and the already-assembled chorus clapped for his entrance, cuing the actual audience. In an eerier move, as we, the audience, finished clapping for the first half, the cast onstage began to applaud us. Simple, yet totally creepy.

In the second half, the focus shifts from society to the inner world of the characters, the stadium emptying out. The Nile Scene has to be the most straightforwardly staged thing I’ve ever seen from Bieito--the moment when Radamès and Aida begin throwing around rolls of toilet paper in celebration aside--and it was also the most dramatically convincing Nile Scene I have ever seen, the staging hitting every emotional point right on cue. Amneris and Radamès’s subsequent scene, she wearing a wedding dress and severely overestimating her appeal to him, was similarly exciting in its rapidly shifting power dynamics.  It’s all very violent and physical, but in a convincing way that seems totally apt for the music. Amneris even gets a bit of a heroic last stand, redeemed by love, even, only to be shot by a police officer near the end.

Alfred Walker as Amonasro, Angeles Blancas as Aida,
Khomov as Radamès (no pictures of Romanenko available)

Soprano Angéles Blancas was sick and I saw Olga Romanko as Aida. Substitutes in a complicated production like this are always worrying but I thought she did a fantastic job and made a remarkably moving Aida. Her voice is dark with a slow vibrato, very Russian, but big and often exciting.  She is lacking only in a good chest voice. Michelle DeYoung was a fantastic Amneris, the vicious counterpart to Romanko’s sensitive Aida. She was announced as singing while ill but sounded great, only hesitant in the lower reaches of her range (and leaving caution behind for a no-holds-barred last scene). I have heard her sing lots of Wagner before and am pleasantly surprised that Amneris works so well for her. It also helped the drama that she is significantly taller than Romanko (and everyone else in the cast, actually).

Tenor Sergej Khomov sang a solid Radamès with a somewhat dry tone. He didn’t inherit the actor gene, but gave an impression of really trying his best, which worked for this well-intentioned, earnest interpretation. Major props to him and Romanko for singing the final scene while being in buried in actual dirt. Alfred Walker was a somewhat underpowered but emphatic and convincingly acted Amonasro. The orchestra sounded fine, but Maurizio Barbacini’s tempos could have used a little more give and take.

There was so much more in this production, but it is the kind of thing that doesn’t make much sense to describe. Bieito’s images work in a kind of brutal dream, or rather nightmare, logic. There are some things I can’t rationally explain--why did we open with a man wearing only Lederhosen slowly stroking the head of a life-sized plastic cow, in silence? and that toilet paper?--but it is all compelling. It is also a timely production. I missed the Viennese elections this weekend, I am told election day itself is not very interesting, but the extreme right FPÖ ended up making a terrifying amount of electoral hay with their Lueger-like fear-mongering and xenophobia, and I’m afraid that Bieito’s warning is all too needed.

Edited to add: Fellow blogger Opera Cake also saw this production, I recommend you read "big picture" take on this show here.

Local notes: The Theater Basel is a small theater, but the two balconies seem to be very far up and far away, so I recommend getting a seat on the lower level if you can. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but makes up for what it lacks in aesthetics with critical acclaim:

(“Opera House of the Year,” which they were recently named by Opernwelt magazine.)

And the water sculpture is a pure delight:

Inside, it is a modern and pleasant multi-theater complex that is a smaller version of the Royal National Theatre in London. Judging by the many empty seats at this performance, tickets shouldn’t be hard to come by, I strongly recommend a visit if you’re in the area. They also offer a very generous 50% discount on tickets for students (but for the discount you must book over the phone or by email, not through the website).

I’ll be seeing Bieito’s Fidelio in Munich in early January. I’m not about to write a guide to working the Bayerische Staatsoper’s confusing “schriflicher Vorverkauf” (written advance sale, despite the name you can do it online), but apparently I filled out the form right because my ticket came in the mail last week.

Next: Harry Kupfer's new Ariadne at the Theater an der Wien on Thursday.
Production photos copyright Hans-Jörg Michel/Theater Basel.  Theater photos by yours truly.
Edited for coherence because writing on four hours of night train sleep is unwise.