I caught the January 25th, 2025 Live in HD Broadcast of Giuseppe Verdi‘s Aida at my local movie theatre.

The performance, being aired live, was from The Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

The production stars Angel Blue (Aida), Piotr Beczała (Radamès), Judit Kutasi(Amneris), Quinn Kelsey (Amonasro), Harold Wilson (The King of Egypt), Dmitry Belosselskiy (Ramfis, The High Priest), Yongzhao Yu (Messenger), and Amanda Batista (High Priestess.)

This is new production directed by Michael Mayer, with sets by Christine Jones, costumes by Susan Hilferty, lighting by Kevin Adams, choreography by Oleg Glushkov. The Met Opera Orchestra was leg by their Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

The production for the most part is very traditional. During the intermission interview, the production team discussed how they tried to put on an accurate portrayal of the opera. The only part of the production, that had its’ flaws, was to try and frame the opera during an archeologist dig. When the opera opens, an archeologist is seen being lowered into a tomb and starts looking around. He finds a dagger that he wraps up and puts into his bag and he continues to look around as the first scene starts. During the performance, archeologists would randomly appear – on several occasions walking through the performance, usually during the scene changes. However, during the Grand March, instead of the victorious Egyptian army walking through with the spoils of war, the archeologists are walking out with treasures that they have found. Overall, I found the archeologists randomly showing up, and their looting of the tomb instead of the celebration of the victorious Egyptian army to be a distraction and took away from the scenes they were in instead of adding to them. Only two times did they work well – in the opening scene and for the scene change between Acts I and II when one of the archeologists was sketching the Hieroglyphs she saw, which we saw developing on the curtain. Although, I do admit that the looting of the tomb was thought provoking as we know that is what really occurred when tombs were discovered.

I found the singing overall to be well. Mr. Beczała was will when the production opened at the end of 2024 and missed a couple of performances at the start of the month. I thought at a couple of times that this was holding him back a small amount but overall liked his performance and found it moving. Ms. Blue’s Aida was quite moving and her third act aria “O patria mia” (Oh, my dear country!) was very moving. Mr Kelsey’s Amonasro was excellent. His Amonasro wanted revenge against Egypt for enslaving his daughter and then defeating his army in the war. Ms. Kutasi’s Amneris was torn between wanting revenge against her rival (Aida) and her love for Radamès. At the very end of the performance, Amneris commits suicide with the dagger the archeologist found at the beginning of the opera. Ms. Kutasi’s performance led me to believe that Amneris really didn’t know what else to do – she was so upset when the Priests condemn Radamès to death in Act III.

The Met Opera, under Maestro Nézet-Séguin, did a very goof job during the performance. Although, one a couple of occasions it sounded like they trying to drown out the singers – an issue I have heard about from people who have attended performances at The Met earlier in the run. The Met Chorus was excellent as usual.

The performance and broadcast today was dedicated to Otto Schenk, the opera director who passed away earlier this year. As a fan of Mr. Schenk’s work, this was very nice move on The Met’s part.