The Queens' Voice

Lucky to be there at the propenultimate performance of one of the Metropolitan Opera's iconic productions, Sonja Frisell's "Aida." (Its 268 performances may seem like a lot, but the program noted that this was the company's 1189th performance of the opera!) I've seen it once before, in 2012, but this time we were in the orchestra. The orchestral sound there isn't as good as the Family Circle (where we go when we don't get discount tickets) but the sets envelope you. Especially these, which are as tall as they are wide and deep, and epic in scale and detail. We were able to see the blue sky atop the monumental backdrop to the famous victory parade scene depicted above, for example - though the photo doesn't capture how the light made it look for all the world like sunlight, a portal to another world. And the cavernous temple of Ptah... I feel a chill down my spine just remembering it, as if I'd been in its sublime depths. (And of course in the final scene we get to see it raised, then descend, above the room where Radames and Aida are entombed...)

Apparently this production was to be retired already two years ago, getting a reprieve because the pandemic interrupted the development of its successor. But this one had me thinking of another pandemic, the untold thousands of gay opera lovers in the time before AIDS was treatable, who will have found escape in this grand opera's hyperreality (remember The Queen's Throat?), and followed doomed Aida's triumph in death with special pathos. I felt those lovers of this production present still.