Aida

The O2 Dublin THE PUBLICITY for Friday’s production of Verdi’s Aida at the O2 promised “Ireland’s Largest Ever Opera,” with “a cast in excess of 250, full orchestra, lavish costumes, stage sets and scenery”.

Well, now, that’s quite a claim, given that for the last production of Aida at the same venue (in 1994 when the O2 was still called the Point) the chorus brought together the members of 10 Irish choirs and choral societies, with a claimed total of more than 700 voices, and they were joined, not only by the full strength of the National Symphony Orchestra (itself considerably larger than Friday’s Nova Amadeus orchestra), but also by the members of the Army No 1 Band.

Size is not everything in opera, not even in Aida, and what was seen and heard at the Point in 1994 would not have been hard to trump in terms of production standards.

There have, of course, been other productions in Ireland since then.

For Opera Northern Ireland in 1997, director Jamie Hynes relocated the action to the Franco- Prussian war, and for Opera Ireland in 2000, Dieter Kaegi moved it forward again to the inter- war years of the 20th century.

So there’s certainly been a gap in the market for a promoter willing to satisfy traditionalists hungry for an Aida that’s actually set in ancient Egypt, or to thrill anyone who wanted an Aida to deliver in terms of visual spectacle.

Sadly, Friday’s production, directed by Otello Camponeschi, costumed by Fabrizio Onali and conducted by Stefano Seghedoni, was far too flaky to leave many positive impressions.

The O2 is a vast improvement on the Point in terms of creature comforts, sightlines and general efficiency of moving large numbers of people in and out, but it’s not well-equipped for opera. It has no fly-tower and, with a stage projecting into the auditorium, not much in the way of wing space either.

The sets – giant painted flats of the type I remember from the parish-hall pantos of my childhood – were spectacular in their awfulness and awkwardness.

It came as no surprise that the delays of changing them proved a trigger for interventions from the audience, in the form of ironic and irritated applause and whistling.

Don’t be surprised if the hilarious cushion supply scene appears on YouTube.

The badly amplified orchestral playing varied from dire and risible (the violins were particularly weak) to sensitive and shapely (mostly from the woodwind).

The singers were treated altogether better by the amplification, with Rosella Redoglia’s Aida at her most affecting in her upper range and Stefania Scolastici a richly fruity- toned Amneris. Ernesto Grisales’s Radames scooped and bellowed a bit too much, but certainly gave the impression of vocal heft.

No programme books were available to buy, leaving opera novices in the dark about the plot, and the screens on either side of the stage, which mixed images of the stage action with English subtitles, were at angles that rendered the text unreadable from my seat in Block P.

The market opening for a successfully spectacular Aida is still there.