{"id":1437,"date":"2017-10-04T11:51:24","date_gmt":"2017-10-04T11:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1437"},"modified":"2017-10-04T11:51:24","modified_gmt":"2017-10-04T11:51:24","slug":"aida-at-the-eno-singing-the-words-of-one-song-to-the-tune-of-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2017\/10\/aida-at-the-eno-singing-the-words-of-one-song-to-the-tune-of-another.html","title":{"rendered":"Aida at the ENO: singing the words of one song to the tune of another"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Latonia Moore as Aida wearing two lamp shades. A scene from Aida by Verdi @ London Coliseum. An English National Opera production. Conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson. Directed by Phelim McDermott.\u00a0 \u00a9Tristram Kenton 09-17<\/p><\/div>\n

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No production of Aida will ever improve on the one I saw in 1962 at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. (I was only 21, and with my father \u2013 so if my memory has burnished or slighted some of the details, forgive me.) The Triumphal March had not one, but two corps de ballet<\/em> (some dancers and acrobats, I regret to say, in blackface \u2013 but it was a long time ago), and they were preceded by live horses, camels \u2013 and I\u2019m positive there was an elephant or two.<\/p>\n

Phelim McDermott\u2019s Improbable company has mounted a new production of Verdi\u2019s weirdest opera at the English National Opera, with him directing, and sets by Tom Pye, costumes by Kevin Pollard and lighting by Bruno Poet; \u201csilk effects\u201d \u2013 i.e., swirling airborne bits of fabric going every which-way \u2013 by Basil Twist; and in place of Caracalla\u2019s ballets, a \u201cSkills Ensemble\u201d of the \u201cfemale-led acrobatic theatre company Mimbre, choreographed by Movement Director Lina Johansson,\u201d \u00a0to quote the press handout.<\/p>\n

It is not, I fear, Improbable\u2019s finest two hours and 40 minutes \u2013 no effects on the scale, or of the grandeur, of those of Satyagraha<\/em> or Akhnaten<\/em>. The visual defect is that, despite Pye\u2019s towers and Twist\u2019s windmilling red silk scarves, the production is stubbornly horizontal. The costumes mix sort-of modern dress with fantasy hats, gowns and robes \u2013 some of them shaped, less like objects you see in the British Museum\u2019s Egyptian galleries, and more like ornamental details of Gaud\u00ed\u2019s cathedral. For the whole first act poor Aida seems to be wearing on her head and shoulders no fewer than two lampshades, one cobalt blue, the other gold lace.<\/p>\n

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Cast of Aida with red silk effects. \u00a9Tristram Kenton 09-17<\/p><\/div>\n

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The production is almost redeemed by the music. Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts with real respect for the dynamics, and the Aida, the American soprano, Latonia Moore, who has sung the role more than 100 times, is superb. The one role in Aida that really requires acting is Amneris, who has to go from chilling man-eater to needy princess. Mezzo Michelle DeYoung almost carries it off.<\/p>\n

But she has the worst of the problem that afflicts the entire production: the ridiculous translation by Edmund Tracey. It is so far from the Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni that it is the equivalent of Radio 4\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m Sorry I Haven\u2019t a Clue\u2019s\u201d challenge to sing the words of one song to the tune of another.<\/p>\n

As Radam\u00e8s Gwyn Hughes Jones has to struggle to sing \u201cHeavenly Goddess\u201d instead of the open vowels of \u201cCeleste Aida\u201d \u2013 go ahead, try it yourself. Worse, DeYoung has to distort the vowels in order to sing them at all. She at one point sings \u201cbock\u201d, when the surtitles tell us it\u2019s the hard-to-sing flat-A of \u201cback.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unusual to have to complain about ENO\u2019s policy of singing only in English; but this is the first time I can remember a performance almost ruined by a duff translation.\u00a0 What is the point of forcing Latonia Moore to learn a new, unsing-able text? You could almost see the stress on the performers\u2019 faces as they tried to cram in extra syllables, or to do without consonants when they needed them. If the ENO is pleased with Tracey\u2019s translation, why not simply give it to us in the surtitles, while allowing the singers the poetry of the real, Italian libretto?\u00a0 The claim that the audience can better understand Aida<\/em> sung in this wretched translation is laughable and an insult to their intelligence.<\/p>\n

This Aida<\/em> should be a landmark: the production that finally convinced the ENO to perform works in their original language. Poetry matters, too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  No production of Aida will ever improve on the one I saw in 1962 at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. (I was only 21, and with my father \u2013 so if my memory has burnished or slighted some of the details, forgive me.) The Triumphal March had not one, but two corps de […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-nb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1442,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions\/1442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}