Stripped of colour and ornament, pharaohs, hieroglyphs and all the panoply that fed into 19th-century Egyptomania, Verdi’s Aida remains rebelliously intact. Two countries are embattled, two people from opposite sides – Egypt and Ethiopia – fatefully in love. The story is ancient, the politics nonspecific. War, whether camouflaged by the imperatives of passion or religion, is always to the fore. Verdi’s music is the binding force, with grand choruses, virtuosic solos and an orchestration of seductive but sinister detail: those serpentine low woodwind solos, the baleful low brass, the trumpet fanfares so shameless and brash they epitomise totalitarian power.
Into this cast-iron musical mould, Robert Carsen has poured his molten modern setting for the Royal Opera House, the first new production of the season, conducted by Antonio Pappano. Egypt is sketchily but determinedly evoked in the temple-like structure of Miriam Buether’s designs: severe grey blocks interrupted only by a flash of colour in carpet or flag, or in the boxy suits favoured by Amneris (Agnieszka Rehlis), daughter of the king of Egypt but surely a scion of the house of Trump. We are in an any-place regime where the militia holds sway and photorealist icons of the ruler are the only allowable decoration. Military uniforms – costumes by Annemarie Woods – conjure the faceless extremes of war, from the khaki drabness of battle to the peaked-cap glory of victory.
