SFOpera AIDA is fantastic!
Sep. 17th, 2010 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thoreauit was TREMENDOUS and mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick stole the show as Amneris.
Here she is in a less um. flashy production of AIDA singing in The Judgement Scene:
the show last night was sung beautifully but was dressed like something out of Vegas. The costume and stage design by famed punk british designer Zandra Rhodes. It was gawdy, bombastic and a lamentation in gold lame. (lamay?) She borrowed heavily from Julie Taymor for the elephant scene - and everything was in saturated glimmering colour.
it felt like how something with be costumed at the luxor in Vegas vs. performing Verdi's timeless opera. and the program for the evening dedicated five pages to an interview with the designer - who apparently got into opera because with a recession on - nobody was buying her fashions any longer.
AIDA is one of my favorite operas - and I'd go see any live production. but Rhodes' designs (for this opera anyway) left me lamenting for a Verdi that was less shiny and more gritty. Honestly, as a reviewer put it when the production premiered in London a couple of years ago, "I've never thought to bring sunglasses to the opera before this evening, it was so bright and gawdy."
Here she is in a less um. flashy production of AIDA singing in The Judgement Scene:
the show last night was sung beautifully but was dressed like something out of Vegas. The costume and stage design by famed punk british designer Zandra Rhodes. It was gawdy, bombastic and a lamentation in gold lame. (lamay?) She borrowed heavily from Julie Taymor for the elephant scene - and everything was in saturated glimmering colour.
it felt like how something with be costumed at the luxor in Vegas vs. performing Verdi's timeless opera. and the program for the evening dedicated five pages to an interview with the designer - who apparently got into opera because with a recession on - nobody was buying her fashions any longer.
AIDA is one of my favorite operas - and I'd go see any live production. but Rhodes' designs (for this opera anyway) left me lamenting for a Verdi that was less shiny and more gritty. Honestly, as a reviewer put it when the production premiered in London a couple of years ago, "I've never thought to bring sunglasses to the opera before this evening, it was so bright and gawdy."
