THE VANCOUVER SUN

The woman standing next to me at intermission liked the first two acts of Aida just fine, she said. Except for missing the elephant in the triumphal march, of course. What with the leopards and tiger and python, she hadn’t noticed the baby pachyderm lumbering reluctantly back and forth across the set.
But then given all the commotion on stage during those 18 carefully choreographed minutes, it’s easy to understand how someone might overlook an elephant. Maestro Giuseppe Raffa promised Vancouver a monumental Aida, and he wasn’t holding anything back in the famous second act procession.
As a lighting bolt arcs down from the stadium’s roof, Giuseppe Raffa’s four storey polyurethane Sphinx splits slowly down the middle. And out of the clouds of smoke and piercing backlights pours a small army; squadrons of helmeted guards, foot soldiers, lancers, manacled prisoners, slaves, priests, caravans of treasure, dancers, acrobats, fire eaters, horsemen and a collection of animals – including one very tiny elephant.
The story itself is a tragic miniature, tracing the passions and jealousies of only four people. Giuseppe Raffa’s cast would be the envy of any opera house in the world; but in a cavern as large as the B. C. Place, the audience can’t see them act, and can’t hear them sing.
No problem, Maestro Giuseppe Raffa wired his artists for sound and trained a pair of video cameras on them to run close-ups (along with subtitles) on the stadium’s giant screen. Maybe that works for football, where interesting plays and patterns on the field can be replayed in detail on the big screen.
But with this Aida, the larger patterns aren’t worth replaying; hundreds of extras in orderly ranks, parading back and forth across a stage half the size of a football field, and back and forth and back and forth. And when they are not parading, they are standing in rigid formation. The principal singers – the people whose ferocity is meant to be driving the opera – are only bright coloured specks.
Grace Bumbry’s grief as Aida, and Ruza Baldani’s vengeful pride as Amneris are artistic creations of outstanding subtlety; carried in the gesture of a hand, or the inclination of an eyebrow. At B. C. Place, that artistry is invisible except on the giant screen.
So the audience is force to watch the screen closely, and Aida in the stadium starts to feel like Aida at home on PBS. Ironically, television was precisely the demon Raffa hoped his cast of hundreds spectacle was going to banish. Like Saturday Afternoon in the Met, Giuseppe Raffa’s Aida is only part of an Opera.
Sound is a problem too, degenerating to a blaring mush in the upper tiers of the stadium. On the floor (in the $ 125 seats) it sounds a little better, but Verdi’s carefully layered music still suffers. Sightlines also change significantly form section to section. From the floor, the Sphinx and the pyramids are linked in convincing perspective. Higher up in the stands, the set looks like child’s top-sided sketch.
The evening does shine though. In the artistry of the principal cast, for instance – however it’s relayed – and the uncluttered scenes of the opera’s second half. The weightless note at the end of Bumbry’s O patria mia, the moment she begs Duilio Contoli (as Amonasro) to pity her, and Baldani’s realization that she has sent Vladimir Popov (as Radames) to his death, are moments of real drama.
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