Aida

Guiseppe Verdi

Leontyne Price, Jon Vickers, Chorus and Orchestra of the Rome Opera (Sir Georg Solti, cond.)

album cover

An Exotic Love Triangle

Aida might be set in North Africa, but it's grand Italian opera with all the trimmings. It's got the languid, deliberating arias that are among Giuseppe Verdi's signature contributions to the form. It's got moments of big flag-waving pageantry that operagoers of his day expected. Naturally there's a tangled love triangle, with subplots of jealousy and deception that unspool gradually.

And the melodies Verdi (1813–1901) gave his title character—sung here by Leontyne Price, in the recording that established her as the preeminent Aida of the twentieth century—are incredibly demanding. They require the soprano, playing a captured Ethiopian princess, to deliver outbursts of tremendous force. And then, seconds later, the score shifts, requiring the singer to produce quiet and deliciously tender high-register long tones, which are sustained almost beyond the limits of human breath. Price handles those challenges with unsurpassed poise, and astounding vocal warmth. (Listen to her thirdact aria "Qui Radamas verra!," which exists in a suspended state of floating, ethereal brilliance.)

Despite Verdi's attempts to "regionalize" the music with snake-charmer curlicues and modes intended to reflect the exotic locale, the most striking musical themes of Aida are solidly European. There's a healthy dose of block-chord heroism, most overtly in the famous "Triumphal March" scene that features the Egyptian army parading war treasures and Ethiopian prisoners (including Aida's father) while chanting "Glory to Egypt!" Just as often, though, the deeply moving music occurs in more intimate moments, like the duet between the Egyptian princess Amneris (played by Rita Gorr) and the man she expects will become her husband, the military general Radames (sung with intense authority by Jon Vickers). And just about every time she sings, whether solo or with others, the African American Price brings her character's deep conflicts to the fore. She obviously relates to the plight of an Ethiopian princess forced into servitude, but is equally compelling contemplating what it means to fall in love with a man who helped conquer her nation. The conflict informs her every phrase.

Price's sense of purpose radiates throughout the production, and creates, with help from the measured tempi and conservative shadings of conductor Sir Georg Solti, an Aida for the ages. In some Aida readings, the showy over-the-top scenes trample the luminous quieter music. Not here. We get all the glory—and all the doubt—Verdi intended.

Genre: Opera
Released: 1962, Decca
Key Tracks: Act 1: "Celeste Aida," "Gloria al Eggito"; Act 2: "Vieni, o guerriero vindice"; Act 3: "Qui Radamas verral," "O terra, addio"
Catalog Choice: La traviata, Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala (Carlo Maria Giulini, cond.)
Next Stop: Georges Bizet: Carmen
After That: Giacomo Puccini: Madama Butterfly, Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti, Vienna Philharmonic (Herbert von Karajan, cond.)
Book Pages: 831–832