2023-06-23 12:54:15
Old Aida comes last. 12,000 people in the ancient oval rise from their seats as Sophia Loren is led into the Arena di Verona. The only surviving siren of Italian post-war cinema strides bent, but it still exudes grandeur.
She embodied Verdi’s Ethiopian opera heroine in a film production in 1953, with Renata Tebaldi lending her the angelic voice. That’s seventy years ago. La Loren is now 88. And for a hundred seasons, where gladiators fought, animals hunted and sea battles were fought two thousand years ago, music theater has been staged under the sky of northern Italy as a folk spectacle – colourful, lively and always in XXL format.
The anniversary season has just started – of course with “Aida”. The festival opera commissioned for the opening of the Suez Canal but not premiered until a year later in 1871 is not a monumental spectacle at all, but one of Giuseppe Verdi’s most intimate pieces, with many piano passages, almost impressionistically shimmering strings and delicate woodwind glazes. “Morendo” – “dying” stands above the last high B flat of Radamé’s request concert aria “Celeste Aida”, which begins immediately after the delicate prelude. But hardly a tenor sticks to it. Yusif Eyvazov at least tries on this memorable evening.
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“Aida” is actually an arena-made misunderstanding with elephants, horses, fanfares and legions of extras. And yet for many millions of people here in the past 110 years, this opera was the first and often the only time they came into contact with music theatre.
Because the arena is low-threshold, in the past the prices on the upper, unnumbered tiers were actually popular, you could come in summer clothes and take your picnic and a good bottle of Valpolicella with you. In memory of the early days without electricity, a candle with a porch was traditionally lit even when it was dark. That’s long gone. Verona has also moved with the times, has adapted, become smoother, more international.
The nearby Lago di Garda records 16 million visitors. Some of the inland sea, which is still halfway in the foothills of the Alps, comes to the summer opera festival in the northernmost Italian city. And there are still many, in addition to opera lovers, city visitors and Romeo and Juliet fans. Sixty percent of the approximately 500,000 arena spectators who experience around fifty performances between mid-June and mid-September are foreigners. Eighty percent of them come from German-speaking countries.
Anna Netrebko singt “O patria mia”
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Opera is here, the Arena company also runs the small Teatro Filharmonico with the typical stagione season of around six titles plus concerts, an eminent economic factor: the budget is fifty million, at least 23 of which are taken from ticket sales. 500 million euros remain as indirect profitability in the region.
“Aida” was tried out here for the first time in 1913 – on the tenth anniversary of Verdi’s death. The then very well-known Veronese tenor Giovanni Zenatello had the original idea in the local “Löwenbräu”. Maestro Tullio Serafin uses a coin to perform an acoustic test – and that’s how the legendary opera penny fell. Maxim Gorki and Franz Kafka were among the first guests. Because wars and Corona came later, the 100th opera season is only being celebrated this season at this uniquely ancient location.
The magic of the Arena, the third largest preserved amphitheater after Rome and Capua, is summed up by the current director Cecilia Gasdia, a Veronese and herself a famous soprano who sang here for twenty summers: “Verona is a beautiful city, small but worth living . And we have this wonderful Piazza Bra in front of the Arena, which works like a big foyer. Everyone can sit there and look at the arena, then go into the arena, come out again after the opera, eat – ah! – and live well!”
Kaufmann and Domingo are there too
But the arena is not only “Aida”. There, between bombastic productions, the great voices of the opera also give a rendezvous. Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann, Juan-Diego Flórez and of course the indestructible Plácido Domingo – they all sing in the open air at top prices this summer. In addition to a new “Aida”, a new “Rigoletto” in Neorealismo retro chic will also be played as sounding blockbusters in 2023, as well as “The Barber of Seville” in a rose garden, “Carmen”, “Nabucco”, “Tosca”, “La traviata”. ‘ and ‘Mama Butterfly’.
The opera title must be famous today. Ponchielli’s “La Gioconda” is only number twelve in the performance statistics, but in 1947 a then completely unknown, plump Greek made her debut in it: Maria Callas. She performed here 24 times until 1954.
It would also have turned 100 this year, like Italy’s fluffy director pope Franco Zeffirelli, who docked here relatively late, but then massively in 1995. He died in 2019. As early as 1969, Birgit Nilsson gave the arena honor as the deafening “Turandot”. Incidentally, Puccini’s China-Böller is in fourth place in the arena performance statistics, surpassed by Verdi’s “Nabucco”, yes, the one with the prisoner’s choir.
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Number two, this is the “Carmen” played here in 1914. And she still shows her racist “gypsy” side, just as Anna Netrebko in Zeffirelli’s “Aida” with dark make-up sparked a little blackface scandal last year. As a historical make-up, however, it stays on, because in Italy they are staunchly committed to their old-fashioned operatic tradition.
Now the “Aida” has been given a radical facelift. That had already been attempted ten years ago with an ironic Fura dels Baus production. It lasted for three seasons, then – at the strong request of the audience – the old Egypt cardboard glittered again, either from the reworked original production or the Zeffirelli version.
Of course, before Stefano Poda, who was the proven total artist responsible for staging, stage, costumes, lighting and choreography, was allowed to get started, things first became patriotically state-supporting. The choir walked up the ramp in cloaks in the colors of Italy, which disappeared after the singing of the national anthem as a colorful breath of air in the sky after the Frecce Tricolore squadron had thundered over the arena oval.
“Only the light is spirit”
And the rain takes its toll when it finally starts. As a Veronese catastrophic storm, it often forces the performances, which sometimes last late into the night, to be interrupted or stopped altogether. Even a few drops always let the strings save their instruments.
Those in their evening robes, who had previously paraded across the red carpet endlessly past the Ristoranti of the Piazza Bra, also fled – including Sophia Loren. Twenty minutes later, the Feudelballett had done their dry wiping duties on the stage with entire rolls of paper, and everyone was back in their seats.
“I wanted a contrast between this ruin and a bridge to the future. Everything from light. Only the light is spirit – like the music”, is how Stefano Poda explains his approach to “Aida”. He plays everywhere and nowhere. A sloping Plexiglas surface leads to small triangles from which a huge, flexible hand rises.
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Left are the remains of a spaceship on the steps, that was the future; on the right you can see a broken pillar, that was the past of civilization. And in the middle, 400 participants in haute couture robes, mirrored suits, royal cloaks and motorbike helmets are parading, scurrying, gathering.
Amneris, daughter of the pharaohs who is jealous of Aida (Olesya Petrova is a veritable mezzo-organ), looks most like ancient Egypt. Animal deities also parade. There are no weapons, but black and white severed hands planted on reeds are wielded as spears, as are poles of light. Anna Netrebko, who finds her way to fine pianists but also great soprano discharges, walks around in fringed dresses. Her commander Radamès (husband Yusif Eyvazov does not disappoint) wears finely embroidered giant cloaks. The ballet dances in spiked strings or rolls out of the underground as a troupe of captive zombies to wash over everything.
In between, Roman Burdenko yells as Aida’s papa, who looks like Tim Lindemann. The individuals are completely absorbed in the crowd, Leni Riefenstahl’s light domes glisten as a pyramid, fog wafts, a silver balloon rises, lasers shine and reflect in red, blue, green, white. As a mixture of Star Wars and Friedrichstadtpalast, this is as overwhelming as it is helpless, fluid as it is rigid.
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Opera must be told clearly in the arena, be visually large and colourful. Poda does not interpret much, he builds tableaux; but they impress, even if after the anti-triumphal act with podiums going up and down, on which corpses prepared by Amneris were previously passed around, there is not much that is new.
Marco Armiliato holds the podium, he is also an old arena hand, as iron as he is effortless together: In Verona you don’t interpret, you have to get through it. Until shortly before one o’clock in the morning the last “O terra, addio” breathed out in front of an enthusiastic crowd and drowned in applause.
Monströses Opernpuzzle
The following day it starts all over again with “Aida”. At 7 p.m., the Spaniard María José Siri, who has never rehearsed, lets herself be quickly instructed; Poda, too, only had two or three days to get used to the masses at the original location. But somehow it works.
In stuffy caverns, everyone – the choir, orchestra, ballet, extras, soloists – is crammed into cramped shacks and wooden boxes throughout the summer. In the corridors with their rough stones and uneven floors, “Carmen” backdrops lie next to “Traviata” costumes, the large decorative parts are stored in front of the arena. Wherever there are monitors and technical equipment, there are also rain roofs, because when it is wet, it trickles through the vault.
But then the monstrous, sometimes grandiose opera puzzle will come together again that evening. And outside they will cheer. As it has been for a hundred Arena di Verona years. Aida grew old here at 110, which is nothing compared to Julia, who is over 500 years old. “Shakespeare always wins after all,” says artistic director Cecilia Gasdia as the last word.
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