Opera
Astronomy
Rodney !Wines
Aida (Covent Garden)
To judge from next year's programme at Covent Garden we are going to have to get used to international all-star opera. Last week's revival of Aida sported the ultimate in this genre, the cast of the recording — a case of art imitating art. It was also the most exciting performance of the opera I have heard, due to Riccardo Muti, Montserrat Caballe and precious little else. Mud made the piece — which, with its opera-seriu moti- vation, can sound a little out of sequence in the Verdi canon — sound as fine and mature as it actually is, and only the Toscanini recording has achieved this before. The orchestral playing and choral singing denoted tireless rehearsal: wonderfully expressive, dramatic'and tense playing and singing, so much so that at one point in the Triumph Scene (which was as cunningly structured by Muti as it is by Verdi) every- thing was so double-pianissimo that you could hear the stage staff chattering. The private episodes were just as carefully hand- led.
Mme Caballe has received some pretty snotty notices from my colleagues. Appar- ently it is not enough to sing everyone else oft the stage; she has to sing herself off the groove as well. The only time her technique let her down was at the notorious C in the Nile Scene. Who in hell cares, when for the rest of the long evening her vivid enun- ciation, endless variety of timbre and per- fect control of dynamiegave not only such aesthetic. pleasure but served the drama as well?
Not that the competition was over- whelming. Placido Domingo found his form in the later acts, but was not in ping-iest voice. There may not be a better Radames singing today, but that still begs a question or two. Fiorenza Cossotto's Amneris has been wildly overpraised. Her sturdy voice has all the allure of spun concrete — no var- iety of tone or dynamic, little evidence of musicianship — and the erudite of her acting lacks even Caballe's rather special (doll. Someone once described Peter Glossop as 'the original singing policeman' — an utterly despicable remark on every count, but I did begin to sec what they meant lis- tening to his Amonasro. Robert Lloyd's King was superb, Paul Plishka's Rainfis good. For the rest, Peter Potter's pro- duction has been needlessly tampered with much to its disadvantage, the lighting was poor, and the new ballet a great deal worse than the old which really is saying some- thing. But despite all this, a great evening, thanks to Muti, Caballe, chorus and ' orchestra, and all that they did for Verdi.
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