Diário do Metropolitan II: Aida

Dia 11/10, última récita de Aida com Anna Netrebko, a mais festejada soprano da atualidade. Vi-a na Sala São Paulo no princípio de agosto, e mesmo pouco ensaiada, vez por outra atropelada pela orquestra acadêmica do Mozarteum, achei-a extraordinária. Netrebko soma excelência vocal e cênica a carisma. Notei, naquele momento, que precisava vê-la em cena numa montagem operística. Achei, além disso, que o MET, pela grandiloquência over the top das suas encenações, ofereceria campo propício para essa cantora/mulher transbordante. 

Não me enganei. A casa fervia naquela noite. Uma exceção naquela semana: ingressos completamente esgotados para a récita, gente a garimpá-los à entrada da sala, a poucos minutos do início do espetáculo. Aida havia recebido resenhas elogiosas de importantes meios de comunicação, e exibida com sucesso nas telas poucos dias antes, no MET on HD (os interessados podem acessar aqui a gravação). 

Netrebko desempenha a personagem-título desta que é uma das principais obras de Verdi, sobre a qual me debrucei com algum vagar aqui em 2013, por ocasião da récita paulistana a que assisti, desempenhada por Maria Billeri (Aida), Stuart Neill (Radamés) e Tuija Knihtlä (Amneris), regida por John Neschling e encenada por Italo Grassi (leia aqui). 

Aida é a fábula da submissão política que caminha de mãos dadas com a submissão individual. A protagonista é a princesa etíope transladada como escrava ao Egito após a invasão de seu país. Ali, apaixona-se pelo guerreiro egípcio Radamés. É amor impossível, já se vê: mesmo o seu corpo não lhe pertence. 

O percurso descendente que segue o seu amor – a princípio, apaixonado e abnegado amor terreno (quiçá passível de realização, enquanto Radamés é apenas um soldado), depois, amor impossível, quando o guerreiro ascende a general e recebe como prêmio a mão da filha do rei – é profundamente lírico. À soprano responsável pelo papel é requerida uma dose considerável de contenção. Netrebko faz um trabalho belíssimo. Não é festejada à toa. É atriz convincente, além de grande cantora – a tessitura grave de sua voz dá densidade à personagem, carregando-a para alturas insuspeitadas ao libreto. Há um único momento de rebeldia contra a sua rival, quando, após ter o seu amor descoberto, ela confronta a outra com agressividade. No mais, a sua voz preencheu a sala de um misto de paixão cálida e do comovente amargor daqueles que sabem que perderam a batalha.

A ferocidade dramática desta ópera pertence a Amneris – personagem maravilhosa, a mais redonda de Aida, que desfia em cena, na mesma medida, o seu repúdio pela rival (literalmente destrutivo, já que a outra lhe pertence) e o seu amor dilacerado. (Tenho uma inegável inclinação à/aos vilã/ões...). Desempenhou-a uma cantora que eu não conhecia (meus gaps operísticos...), e por quem eu instantaneamente caí de amores: Anita Rachvelishvili. Incrivelmente dentro do papel, a mezzo construiu um fulgurante crescendo, à medida que o seu amado Radamés galgava os passos da celebridade e ela se via primeiro a sua esposa, sendo depois preterida e, enfim, sucumbindo juntamente com o casal – simbólica morte em vida, no seu caso. 

O tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko, o Radamés da produção, tem o physique du rôle da personagem. Foi criticado pelo público que o viu nas telas. Talvez ele, demasiado tonitruante, funcione melhor na grande sala do MET que nas filigranas do cinema. 

O conjunto de artistas e a ótima orquestra do MET foram regidos com firmeza por Nicola Luisotti (que, diga-se de passagem, disse-me ter um pé no Brasil, já que a sua mãe nasceu aqui e aqui viveu até a adolescência). 

Casa lotada para a última récita de Aida com Anna Netrebko

No dia 15, uma nova Aida revelou surpresas. Netrebko foi substituída por Tamara Wilson – que debutou no MET em 2014 cantando o papel, e percorreu com ele o país. Antonenko, doente, foi substituído de última hora por Yonghoon Lee, escalado para o papel a partir de janeiro – ele nos contou, à saída dos artistas (sou dessas...), que três horas antes da récita teve de correr a fazer prova de figurino. Ambos, embora já tivessem cantado o papel antes, não haviam ensaiado um com o outro. 

Tamara Wilson como Aida

Não obstante, estiveram ambos brilhantes: A voz de Lee, embora não tenha tanta agilidade, atinge uns escuros que calham ao homem dividido, num só tempo herói e traidor da pátria. A ruiva de olhos verdes Tamara Wilson, de peruca morena encaracolada, tem o corpo emprestado de Aida, mas uma voz etérea, de anjo, (se os anjos existissem) que estabelece contraponto tanto com o tenor quanto com Amneris. 

A soprano fez toda a sua interpretação ser atravessada pelo seu desfecho trágico, como se a sua heroína o antevisse. E que bela a cena desse desfecho! Esqueci-me de que, a princípio, apenas desejara ver Aida para assistir à Netrebko. Por isso, minha recomendação aos amantes de ópera é que procurem ver as mesmas montagens com elencos diferentes. 

A encenação, por fim, é de cair o queixo. O MET é muito bem sucedido em permitir que todo o grande público que ocupa a sala enxergue ao menos o cenário, na falta de enxergar os artistas. A reapresentação de Radamés aos egípcios, que se segue à batalha com o povo etíope, por exemplo, é digna de uma grande produção de Hollywood: cenário enorme, tridimensional, fanfarras, cavalos (aplaudidos em cena aberta, em prejuízo da música..). Um evento pra lá de operístico. Literalmente. 

Continua com La Fanciulla del West.

Atualizado em 3/11/2018:
Esta resenha rendeu um debate interessante com os colegas da página de Facebook Ópera Brasil (meus agradecimentos sobretudo a Virgilio Miranda e a Ching Chang). Pouco falo, durante a resenha, sobre os cenários de Aida utilizados no Metropolitan (concebido por Gianni Quaranta), que, segundo este artigo do New York Times que eu reproduzo abaixo, foram concebidos originalmente para a produção do Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro (1986), estreando no MET em 1988. Chamo atenção sobretudo para a ambivalência entre o público e o privado que os cenários procuraram demarcar, e a relação que a concepção estabelece com a performance dos artistas - ou, como diz a diretora Sonja Frisell, “o conceito de espaço e de poder da vida pública, e o indivíduo perdido em meio disso”. 

Segue o artigo completo e, ao final, fotografia do cenário carioca que serviu de modelo ao nova-iorquino:

This Traditional 'Aida' Focuses On Real People 

By ALLAN KOZINNDEC. December 4, 1988, Page 002027
The New York Times Archives 

SONJA FRISELL, THE DIRECTOR of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Verdi's ''Aida,'' is quietly emphatic about staging operas along traditional lines. ''I tend to think a composer chose a setting for a definite reason,'' she said. ''And I'm convinced that one can make an operatic evening, set in the period the composer designated, seem alive and telling to a modern audience. I don't think transplanting the story is the key to that. I think relevancy is conveyed to the audience through the type and style of acting, and that's what we're working on.

''The difficulty, in working with a cast of famous singers who have sung 'Aida' many, many times, is to make the one we're doing the most relevant one on their minds. And I'm trying to do that not by focusing on 'go left, go right,' but by concentrating on the psychological implications of the characters. I see them as extremely real people, with very big conflicts between their public and private personalities. This conflict is not as obvious as in, say, 'Don Carlos,' but it's here. And what I've told the singers I want is an 'Aida' in which this double existence of the characters is clarified.''

The cast for the production, which opens Thursday, includes Leona Mitchell as Aida, Fiorenza Cossoto as Amneris, Placido Domingo as Radames, Sherrill Milnes as Amonasro and Paul Plishka as Ramfis, with James Levine conducting. It is Miss Frisell's directing debut at the Met, although the British director worked here on a revival of the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle ''L'Italiana in Algeri'' production a few years ago.

The production is also a Met debut for the set designer, Gianni Quaranta, whose credits include not only opera, ballet and theater, but a good deal of film work (including designs for Mr. Zeffirelli's ''Traviata'' and ''Otello'' films). Last year he won an Academy Award for his art direction on ''A Room With a View.'' The costume designer for this ''Aida,'' Dada Saligeri (who is also Mr. Quaranta's wife), did the costumes for the Met's elaborate ''Turandot'' production two seasons ago.

This team worked together on an ''Aida'' in Rio de Janeiro in 1986, and it was because of that production - which, Miss Frisell and Mr. Quaranta say, the Met version will resemble - that the Met called on this trio when the company abandoned its plan for a Franco Zeffirelli production. At the time Mr. Zeffirelli's production was canceled, in mid-1987, Bruce Crawford, the Met's general manager, offered two reasons: cost (Mr. Zeffirelli's ''Aida'' was expected to cost more than his $1.5 million ''Turandot'') and enormity (a grandiose conception, its components would have been difficult to store for repertory performances).

The staging of this replacement has had its share of backstage drama. Work began in the spring of 1987, when Mr. Crawford invited Mr. Quaranta to show the Met his Rio designs. In fact, at first there was some talk of borrowing the Rio sets rather than mounting the production anew. ''But what the Met needed,'' Mr. Quaranta observed, ''was a production it could keep in the house, and use in repertory.'' '

'We made some changes in concept,'' Miss Frisell said. ''We have not reproduced the Rio show on the Met stage. Some of the ideas are the same, but the development has varied. What the Met wanted was a grand 'Aiida' that did not cost too much money to be grand.''

By August, the Met had decided to go ahead, and flew Mr. Quaranta, Miss Saligeri and Miss Frisell to New York for a more detailed planning session. Mr. Quaranta remained at the Met for six weeks, building a model of a two-level set. ''For me,'' Mr. Quaranta said, ''this is not so much a traditional 'Aida' as a metaphysical one. You never really see the dimensions of the space. You see columns, but not the capital at the top; and you see the feet of statues, stretching upwards, but never getting higher than the legs. We want to suggest vast proportions.''

''That's important actually,'' Miss Frisell said. ''We have not attempted to be archeologically correct or realistic. It's more about the concept of the space and power of public life, and the individual who gets lost in it. For instance, we open the opera by presenting the four figures of the various conflicts - Ramfis, Amneris, Aida and Radames - in a private world, rather than mixed up in the usual grandiose Egyptian court spaces.

''There is a wall behind them; and as the King comes in, we open the arches so that the public world is revealed. And as the opera moves into that public world, we fly out the original wall and show the two thrones. But later, when Aida sings 'Ritorna Vincitor!' the sense of the private world is restored.''

While Mr. Quaranta and Miss Saligeri were at the Met building models and ordering costume materials, Miss Frisell was commuting between New York and Chicago, where her production of ''Il Trovatore'' opened last year's Lyric Opera season. Then, between the dress rehearsal and the opening night of her ''Trovatore'' production, Miss Frisell flew to New York to go over the production for James Levine for the first time.

''Most of it he liked,'' she said, ''but he had reservations about how we realized our ideas in the third act.'' Who won? ''Nobody wins in a battle like this. You try the alternatives. One important variation was that in our original design, we had a line of mountains stretching behind the temple. We felt that represented the temple's strength and symbolic power, and the world that Radames's ambition was pulling him towards. We also wanted to show the area directly outside the temple as a shadowy, dark, wild world that represented not only Aida, but the interior world of someone's subconscious - the things that are your true self, but which you don't want to realize.

''But Jimmy felt very strongly that instead of the mountains, there should be a sense of distance - a space to which one could escape. In the end, we combined all three ideas. All of them were valid. You just have to find a way to make them work, and that takes time.''

By August, the scenery was built, costumes were ready, and the production team returned to New York to work with Gil Wechsler, the Met's lighting designer. And in early November, rehearsals got under way - delayed by the fact that Leona Mitchell was ill at the start of the rehearsal period, and because, as Miss Frisell put it, ''there were various problems,'' including a potential budget overrun that had to be dealt with.

A more serious problem, which cropped up less than three weeks before the opening, was the departure of Eugene Collins, the choreographer. Mr. Collins left the production, according to a Met spokesman, because he felt he would not have enough rehearsal time.

Miss Frisell sympathized. ''A lot can be done theoretically, but when it comes to realizing your ideas at the rehearsals, there is a certain number of hours in which you must get everything done. When you've used up those hours, they're gone, and you're in a mess if you haven't got where you're supposed to be. The pressure of the clock can be very, very nerve-racking.'' A new choreographer, Rodney Griffin, was enlisted at the last moment, and is making his Met debut with this production.

Miss Frisell seemed fairly calm about it all. She is one of the few women directing opera (and the only one with a production in this year's Met repertory), and she has achieved that distinction by treading an arduous path. Having studied piano and voice at the Guildhall School, in London, she became an assistant to Carl Ebert at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, when she was 20, in 1958. The following year, she became a student assistant at Glyndebourne, and did odd jobs at both Glyndebourne and Sadler's Wells - answering telephones, selling tickets and observing operas being put together. From there, she went to La Scala, in Milan.

''I thought that wherever I went, it would be difficult, so I might as well start at the top.'' She became a director's assistant, and after a few years she got a staff job as an assistant producer. From 1974 through 1979, she was head of production at La Scala - ''one of those wonderful titles that means nothing,'' she explained. Among her duties were responsibilities for the weekly rehearsal schedules for all productions, and supervision of young assistants and students from the Milan Theater School.

In 1979, she did her first La Scala production that was entirely her own, Vivaldi's ''Tito Manlio,'' with Mr. Quaranta as the set designer. Thereafter, she became a freelance director, and has staged works at a number of opera houses.

Might a female director take a different view of ''Aida'' than a male director?

''I have no idea. I do it the way I feel it.'' But she is willing to discuss her ideas about the principal characters, and how they represent her notion of public and private selves. ''Ramfis,'' she said, ''is only public. Amneris is obviously both public and private, in that she was born a princess. As a public person, she is born to make a pharaoh of the man who marries her; but privately, she wants to influence the choice of that man by having the man she wants chosen as the war leader. If he is victorious, she can marry him.

''Aida appears to be only a slave, and therefore only a private person, because nobody knows she was born to the same station as Amneris. And Radames was born a private person, but has all the drive and ambition of the useful go-ahead young man who wants to get into the light and become a big public figure. Once he accepts consecration to the service of his country, he becomes a public personality. Then he suddenly realizes, 'Hell, I've got everything I wanted, and now I'm not sure I wanted it.' That can happen to anybody in life, which is one reason I think it has relevance. Another is that I believe that position implies duty - that you can't go through life taking and not giving.

''I don't want to say we have new ideas, because nobody ever really does. Things filter up from the collecive subconscious at a particular time, and suddenly they're in everybody's minds. I feel I have a strong viewpoint. But I don't want to stuff it down anyone's throat. I just hope that when people see it, they'll get as near as I can bring them to what Verdi wanted.''

Cenário carioca de Aida