11/11/2023 0 Comments Sf opera aida reviewThe opera was staged with only one intermission – between Acts II and III. It was a wonderfully overwhelming sensation. I felt it when any one of the triangle was singing a solo aria and really let loose. This was not only during scenes with full chorus. But in Palo Alto I was immersed – I was saturated – the music came not only through my ears but through every pore in my skin – I felt it in my very bones. Therefore, it is not surprising if the quantity of high quality music reaching an individual member of the audience is substantially greater in the smaller theatre.Īnd indeed, that was the case. And this factor is more than compensated for by the SFOpera’s ceiling being at least three times higher. Granted that SFOpera can probably attract singers with the capacity to produce louder sounds, I doubt that they could double it. WBO’s production of Aida had an orchestra of 22 and a chorus of 32 – the numbers for SFOpera are 84 and 80, so the ratios are approximately 4 to 1 and 2.5 to 1. Let me, for a moment shed my Opera Nut hat for the cap and gown of my former career as a professor of engineering. Lucie Stern Theatre has approximately 400 seats compared with about 3,000 at War Memorial Theatre, home of San Francisco Opera – as I recall, about 2,400 of those are in the orchestra: a ratio of 6 to 1. Lucie Stern Theatre front entrance photo from Here Comes the Guide He is the King of Ethiopia and the father of Aida, but when paternal love comes into conflict with love of country, he is emphatic in his choice of the latter: “You are no daughter of mine!” Aida is also an intimate story of four people: Aida (Karen Slack), Radames (David Gustafson), Amneris (Cybele Gouvenneur), and Amonasro (Doug Botnick), each with an inner conflict between love and patriotism.Īmonasro is the least complex of the four. Indeed, Met Opera productions of the 1930s as well as productions in Egypt and in Rome have actually had live elephants on stage for the triumphal march – and the 2010 San Francisco Opera had a wonderful artificial representation of a gigantic elephant.īut the triumphal march is but one scene in a three-plus hour performance. Well, if a group of casual opera-goers were to play this game and be given the word “Aida”, I suspect that a substantial number of them would respond, “Elephants”. You know the “word-association” party game? The leader calls out a word and each guest is to write down the word that they first associate with it.
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