ritics

Phelim McDermott’s Aida is superbly sung but let down by

indiff erent acting – and some very distracting headgear

Keri-Lynn Wilson got a rapturous

cheer before she had so much as

twitched her baton on the fi rst night of

Aida – partly because it is still a rarity

to see a woman lead an orchestra.

But that pleasure aside, she can be

cheered for all the right reasons too :

she leads the fi rst-rate orchestra with

verve. Musically, this was a satisfactory

evening – if you had closed your

eyes throughout, blamelessly good.

Theatrically, I am still puzzling over

it ( ironically, it was its “theatricality ”

that Verdi himself most prized about

his opera). It begins promisingly:

the heavy blue curtain opens with

exaggerated slowness, like a striptease,

to reveal a slim obelisk of orange light.

Gwyn Hughes Jones as Radam ès sings

superbly, in an all-conquering voice,

with enough honey in it for any love

song, and you hear, disarmingly, his

Welsh accent leaking through. But

as he sings about Aida “radiant with

light”, a length of billowing turquoise

undulates, like a silken monster, as a

baffl ing illustration to his text. It is the

beginning of an evening of inexplicable

visual outlandishness.

Michelle DeYoung as Amneris , the

king’s daughter, is dressed in a white

costume that makes her look like a badly

wrapped parcel with lots of escaping

paper. And how could anyone be taken

seriously wearing such an odd bonnet?

It does not seem a fair way to dress a

fi ne singer. Sack the milliner, I found

myself scribbling on my notepad, in the

dark, as the parade of hats continued

and their peculiarity intensifi ed. Aida, in

a more pardonable attempt at Egyptian

accuracy, wears what looks like a blue

bollard – you could tie a ship to her

head. There is also a surfeit of other

attention-seeking headgear: antlers,

ravens’ wings, papier-mache animals

• this top-heavy Aida could take on
  Ascot. I love inventive eccentricity
  but want to feel it is in the service of a
  story. I did not know why anyone was
  dressed in this random way. Why is Aida
  wearing what looks like a fi shing net
  round her neck? I could not make head
  or tail – but particularly head – of the
  visual vocabulary ; it was a hat trick too
  far. Phelim McDermott is a beguilingly
  original director – his recent production
  of Akhnaten, also set in Egypt, won
  him an Olivier. It is understandable
  that he wants to avoid, as he says in
  a programme interview, looking like
  the “top fl oor of Harrods with all that
  bling”. But where is the dazzle of the
  desert? What we have, here, in Tom
  Pye’s design, is darkness, incoherence
  and obelisks that look like the luminous
  noses of Edward Lear ’s Dong.
  Aida is superlatively sung by Latonia
  Moore. Her voice – pure, powerful,
  fi lling the house – has a life of its own
  and that, it will turn out, is what it
  needs because something has gone
  awry with the acting here , almost
  across the board. The programme’s
  account of the rehearsal process
  sounds invigorating – a departure
  from tired tradition – but, in practice,
  I did not believe a word anyone was
  singing, with the exception of Musa

Ngqungwana’s Amonasro , Aida’s

father, who looks his daughter in the

eye, the depth of his rapport a contrast

to dimensionlessness elsewhere. One

of the challenges of directing opera is

to keep the inter connectedness even

when – or especially when – a singer

is addressing the audience exclusively.

Here, too often, the character being

sung to hangs about like a wallfl ower.

This lack of connection between

characters is a disaster. And there is

no shortage of other minor details

that need a rethink. One example:

in the fi nal scene, Radamès, about

to be buried alive, hears noises and

wonders who is coming. He has, in

this production, barely fi nished his

question before Aida is upon him,

which makes his doubt about who was

disturbing the peace seem absurd. A

laboured English translation does no

one any favours either. When Amneris

sings: “I loved you. I suff ered torture, ”

it sounds translated. Cloaked in Italian,

it might have moved us to tears. Aida

is described as a love triangle – here,

with an over-reliance on the audience

as its over-addressed fourth side, it is a

lifeless square.

Fiona Maddocks is away

CLASSICAL

The Observer|01.10.17|THE NEW REVIEW 23

‘Sometimes

weighty,

sometimes

fl ighty’

Kitty Empire

on Lorde

page 29

The milliner’s tale...

It could be a seaside idyll were it

not for the fearful crowds queu ing

at the Rafah border as the gates

clang shut, or the Hamas youth march

cutting straight across the scene.

Alleys end in roadblocks, cars are

forced to reverse down streets and as

the camera rises high to look down

on the blasted landscape, revealing

traces of unexplained violence,

Benjamin Britten’s Fanfare from

Les Illuminations surges on the

soundtrack, Rimbaud’s ironic phrase

“Only I have the key to this savage

parade ” ringing out as if describing

the ultimate mystery of Gaza.

The fi lm is incomplete. Nashashibi

was forced to leave by Israeli

incursions and my sense is that the

piece might have been as good as

her best work given more time. But

as it is, she is showing another fi lm

about a secluded enclave, this time a

compound in Guatemala where two

artists live together, an elderly mother

and her daughter. Who se work is

whose? Are we inside or out? The

women speak of being imprisoned

here, once, and it feels as if they still

are, only now by choice.

Glowing red interiors give way

to dense green gardens , threatened

by snakes and the jungle beyond.

Villagers arrive with food, make

lunch, keep the artists afl oat. How

would the women survive without

them – or without each other? What

will the mother do when the daughter

leaves on holiday? What will the

daughter do when the mother dies?

Nahashibi takes us into this slow,

mesmerising existence in a fi lm

without narration, or even much

dialogue, yet profound as any tragedy.

It’s only half of her show, but this

work alone deserves the Turner prize.

Michelle DeYoung,

left, as Amneris

with Latonia

Moore as Aida.

Photograph by

Tr i s t r a m Ke n to n

Laura

Cumming

embodying German shame and

defeatism after the fi rst world war.

Coarsest of all, it is in the greasy

fi nger swipes made on a mobile phone

that the artist has had painstakingly

transformed into enormous etchings

that resemble ab- ex brushstrokes; a

counterproductive waste of human

labour, never mind money.

B üttner’s 2007 fi lm about Carmelite

nuns was a much stronger candidate

for the prize, which will be awarded

in a live TV ceremony on 5 December.

Indeed one concern about the new

age rules is that the prize may start to

look backwards, as in Himid’s case,

to work from the long ago past. But

the judges base their shortlist strictly

on the exhibitions they have seen

in the previous year; in this respect,

nothing has changed. And rather like

the Man Booker, often thought to

reward the wrong novel in a writer’s

output, so the Turner prize sometimes

alights on the wrong phase or works

in an artist’s career. And so it seems

for Rosalind Nashashibi , whose

spellbinding fi lms I always seek out,

and who has long been one of Britain’s

best artists.

Nashashibi (born Croydon, 1973 )

is showing two fi lms. Electrical

Gaza employs many characteristic

methods, fusing narrative techniques

with documentary footage, staging

occasional scenes, interrupting vérité

with fragments of animation. Here,

she captures the self-contained life

of Gaza, removed from the world yet

somehow enchanted: shops selling

sweets and wedding dresses; cars

stopping so that friends can leap out

and hug one another; streets that

end in sparkling blue sea, where –

unforgettable image – horses are

bathed in the waves.

Th e king’s

daughter

is dressed

in a white

costume

that

makes

her look

like a

badly

wrapped

parcel

times

ty,

imes

’

mpire

de

Kate

Kellaway

@KateKellaway1

Aida

Coliseum, London WC2

El Greco to Goya

Wallace Collection,

London; until 7 Jan

Spanish

masterpieces

from the Bowes

Museum paired

with the Wallace’s

own works by

Velázquez , Goya

and Murillo

Th omas Ruff

Whitechapel

Gallery, London;

until 21 Jan

Four decades

of eerie and

disconcerting

images by this

great German

photographer

Jenny Holzer

Blenheim Palace,

Woodstock; until

31 Dec

US sloganist par

excellence lights up

Blenheim with her

neon provocations

THREE MORE

TO SEE...