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    6 Highlights of Maria Callas’s Opera Career at La Scala

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    The soprano appeared in more than two dozen productions at the house in Milan as she rose to become opera’s leading lady. Here are six highlights.No opera house has been more instrumental to the enduring myth of Maria Callas than the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.Her more than two dozen productions at La Scala mirrored the peaks and troughs of her life and marked her finest years as an opera singer.It was near the start of her La Scala years that Callas underwent a physical transformation, losing some 80 pounds and becoming a global celebrity; and it was toward the end of that period that she left her husband Giovanni Battista Meneghini for the wealthy magnate Aristotle Onassis, who then married someone else (Jacqueline Kennedy).Callas’s many performances at La Scala “have passed into legend,” said Neil Fisher, executive culture and books editor, The Times and Sunday Times in London. “If La Scala is a temple to opera, then Maria Callas is one of the goddesses.”Callas during a rehearsal for Cherubini’s “Medea” with the Canadian tenor Jon Vickers at La Scala in 1961. “Medea” was her final show at La Scala.Associated PressLa Scala’s reputation, in turn, is “almost inseparable” from her, Mr. Fisher added: “Postwar, the glamour of opera, and also its mystique, swirls around this character of Maria Callas.”Why does a soprano who died in 1977 remain the single most celebrated opera singer of all time?Because she made opera “about the story and the drama and the narrative,” said the American soprano Lisette Oropesa. “It wasn’t just about the beauty of the voice: She used her voice to tell a story.”Crucially, Ms. Oropesa noted, Callas became the story herself — a “hot-topic, controversial figure” — after her life became mixed up with those of Onassis and Kennedy. As a result, “people to this day cannot stop talking about her,” Ms. Oropesa added. She’s “a legend.”Callas appearing as Violetta in “La Traviata” by Giuseppe Verdi, in a 1955 production at La Scala. The character is widely considered one of her three finest roles.DeAgostini/Getty ImagesFollowing is an overview of some of Callas’s career highlights at La Scala.“Aida” (Verdi): April 12, 1950Callas’s very first performance onstage at La Scala was as a substitute for the much-adored Renata Tebaldi, who was unwell. It was, by all accounts, a tepid debut. A skin condition had given the 26-year-old soprano facial blemishes that she awkwardly covered with veils. In “Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography,” by Anne Edwards, the director Franco Zeffirelli (who would go on to work with Callas) recalled “this overweight Greek lady, peeping out from behind her trailing chiffon,” with an “unevenness” in her voice. Her two remaining performances of “Aida” went much better, but this inaugural “Aida” was a blow to the young prodigy’s self-confidence.“I Vespri Siciliani” (Verdi):Dec. 7, 1951This was the first time that Callas was headlining a La Scala production — kicking off the opera house’s season, in fact — and it was a triumph. She was understandably nervous at the start. “The miraculous throat of Maria Meneghini Callas did not have to fear the demand of the opera,” the music reviewer Franco Abbiati wrote in the newspaper Corriere della Sera (according to the biography “Maria Callas: The Tigress and the Lamb,” by David Bret). Mr. Abbiati lauded the “phosphorescent beauty” of her tones, and “her technical agility, which is more than rare — it is unique.”“Lucia di Lammermoor” (Donizetti): Jan. 18, 1954This was Callas’s first time with the renowned conductor Herbert von Karajan at the baton, and she didn’t disappoint. In the famous “mad scene” — where Lucia stabs her new husband on her wedding night — Callas appeared barehanded, in a nightgown and messy hair, on a dimly lit staircase; she had turned down the dagger and fake blood that are usually used to portray the murder. Yet her performance was so realistic that mesmerized audience members jumped up mid-performance, clapping and cheering, and tossed red carnations onstage that Callas touched as if they were gobs of blood. In Opera News, the critic Cynthia Jolly hailed “Callas’s supremacy amongst present-day sopranos,” and “a heart-rending poignancy of timbre which is quite unforgettable,” according to the Bret biography.“La Traviata” (Verdi): May 28, 1955The character of Violetta in “La Traviata” is widely considered one of Callas’s three finest roles — along with Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Bellini’s “Norma.” And the May 1955 staging by the director Luchino Visconti is, in turn, considered her finest “Traviata.” It was “a revolutionary production” that was “renowned for its realism, the intimacy and the gorgeousness of the setting, the painterly qualities,” said Mr. Fisher of The Times. It also “encapsulated so much” of the Maria Callas that audiences have come to know and revere. Set in La Belle Epoque, with ornate décor and costumes, the show triggered another audience frenzy on opening night. People cried out Callas’s name, sobbed uncontrollably and showered the stage with red roses, which a tearful Callas picked up as she took a solo bow. The conductor Carlo Maria Giulini later confessed that he, too, had wept in the pit. Yet Callas’s monopolizing of attention in her solo bow was too much for the tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano, who quit the show that night.“Anna Bolena” (Donizetti):April 14, 1957This was another Visconti spectacular, and another triumph. Callas played Anne Boleyn, a doomed wife of Henry VIII, in a somewhat lesser-known Donizetti opera. Queenlike, she appeared in a dark blue gown and enormous jewels at the top of a grand staircase, surrounded by royal portraits. Musically, she gave it her all, triggering 24 minutes of applause (according to the Edwards biography), a La Scala record.Yet offstage, in Milan, her star was starting to fade, after she had refused to perform a fifth time with the La Scala opera company on a tour in Edinburgh (she was only contractually obligated to four performances, and was feeling unwell). Protesters awaited her as she headed to the “Anna Bolena” premiere, the Edwards biography reported, and she was accompanied inside by armed police officers. When she got home on the last night of the show, there were obscenities scribbled with animal excrement on her front door and windows.“Medea” (Cherubini): May 29, 1962By the time of her final performances at La Scala, Callas was divorced and in a relationship with Onassis. Her voice was still dazzling audiences worldwide. Just 10 days before this performance of “Medea,” she had sung two arias from the opera “Carmen” at a celebration of President John F. Kennedy’s 45th birthday (where Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday”).Yet as she was performing “Medea” that night, a sinus infection led Callas’s voice to waver in parts, though she sang all the way to the end, and still managed to draw some press acclaim.Long after her passing, Lord Harewood, a Callas supporter and onetime director of the Royal Opera House, recalled in an Evening Standard article that was excerpted in the Bret biography that it was “evident that her voice had deteriorated markedly,” and attributed it to her “being at sea with Onassis in his boat” and attending “too many parties.”“You felt that this wonderful career was coming to an end,” he was quoted as saying in the Bret biography. “But I thought that she still had great power, a tremendous grandeur about everything she did. In spite of everything, she never lost that.” More

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      He Quit Singing Because of Body Shaming. Now He’s Making a Comeback.

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      The tenor Limmie Pulliam, who made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday, hopes to break barriers for larger artists.As a rising young tenor in the 1990s, Limmie Pulliam dreamed of a career that would take him to the world’s top stages. But Pulliam, who has struggled with excessive weight for much of his life, quit singing in his early 20s because of concerns about body shaming in the music industry, finding work instead as a debt collector and a security guard.Now, after spending much of the past decade rebuilding his voice and career, Pulliam, 47, is finally realizing his dream. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall on Friday with the Oberlin Orchestra, singing the title role in R. Nathaniel Dett’s “The Ordering of Moses.” And last month, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in the role of Radamès in Verdi’s “Aida,” filling in for a tenor who had canceled his appearance — making Pulliam the first Black singer to perform that role in the Met’s history.His solemn performance received a warm ovation at Carnegie.“To hear Limmie succeed in this moment so beautifully, and at this point in his life, was personally satisfying for me,” said Timothy LeFebvre, the chair of the voice department at Oberlin. “We always cheer on our colleagues when they reach these notable achievements, but even more so when it is so hard fought.”In an interview, Pulliam reflected on his 12-year break from singing and the challenges facing larger artists, who once were common in the industry but have faced pressure in recent years to slim down. He also talked about how a chance to perform the national anthem while working as a field organizer in Missouri for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign allowed him to rediscover his voice. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.After you attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, you seemed destined for a career in opera. Then you quit. What happened?There was a lot of pressure on artists in terms of appearance. The industry cared about things that really had nothing to do with the voice, but with physicality, and that made it difficult for singers of size. It made it easy for me to walk away. I made myself a promise that if it ever stopped being fun, I would do something else. And so I did.What was it like at the time for singers struggling with concerns about their weight?People within the industry were able to make comments regarding someone’s physical look with impunity. In other industries, that would not be accepted, but it was almost widely accepted within the classical music world. It felt like it was OK to make fun of people of size and that we weren’t worthy of careers. It was a very difficult time, and it’s still a very difficult time.What would people say to you?I’ve had general directors send me email messages complimenting me on my voice and then saying, “Well, when you lose 50 pounds, get in touch with me again, and I’ll give you a live audition.”How did it feel to hear those comments?I began to look at rejection in a different way. I used to get a bit down when I received a note like that or just a flat-out refusal about an audition. But I began to use that as fuel to make me want to work even harder — to be an even better vocalist. I thought, “They may not want me right now, but they will need me at some point.”During your break from classical music, you worked a variety of jobs, eventually starting your own security firm. Did you sing at all, even for your own pleasure — at home, in the shower, at church?Not really. I was deliberately making the decision not to sing. I just didn’t have the desire. I wasn’t singing that much in church, and I rarely listened to the radio in the car. There wasn’t much going on musically for me during that time. I was just concentrating on this new life that I was trying to build and trying to move forward.And then, in 2007, when you were 31 and working as a field organizer for the Obama campaign in Missouri, your home state, you got an unexpected chance to perform the national anthem.We had invited someone to sing the national anthem. And they got cold feet at the last minute and decided they didn’t want to do it. And it happened to be an event that I had invited my boss to attend. And he immediately said, “I remember seeing on your résumé that you used to be an opera singer. Why don’t you sing it?” And I said, “Well, you know, I haven’t sung for a number of years. And the national anthem is not an easy song to sing. I’m not sure I can pull it off.” It was terrifying; it was not something I had practiced or prepared. I did not know what was going to come out.But he convinced me to do it. And I sang at the event and ended up singing at several other events. And in doing so, I noticed some very interesting changes in my voice. It had taken on a more mature, burnished quality. And it had grown substantially in size. And it really piqued my interest as to the type of repertoire I could possibly sing with this new instrument.Your returned to the stage five years later, when you were 36, at the National Opera Association’s vocal competition. How did you prepare?I pulled out my old lesson tapes from the conservatory and began working with those lesson tapes and polishing things, just out of interest to see what the voice could do. And I eventually reached out to a voice teacher in Memphis, Tenn., and began working with her. We realized that we had something that was special — that there wasn’t anyone like me as an artist out there. We were working to rekindle the voice. That’s when I found the joy again in singing.Was it easy to get back into the business?It took a good three years or so before that first staged operatic engagement came, and it came because I was posting clips of my singing on YouTube and other platforms and just sharing wherever I could, and reaching out to friends who were still in the industry and letting them know I was back and basically trying to sing for anyone who would hear me.A friend saw a clip of me singing “Ch’ella mi creda libero e lontano” from Puccini’s “La Fanciulla del West” with my former high school choir director playing the piano. She shared it with her husband, who happened to be the music director of a small opera company in the Seattle area. They invited me to to sing the role of Canio in “Pagliacci.”You were the first Black singer to perform the role of Radamès at the Met. Do you feel that classical music is doing enough to address racial and ethnic disparities?As a Black man, I’m usually the only one who looks like me in a rehearsal setting. So there always is a sense of isolation, of not fitting in. You have to learn to work through that and do your job to the best of your ability.We always seem to have had celebrated Black female voices in the industry, like Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett. But the list of Black men has always been quite short. There are some in the industry who have difficulty in seeing Black males in romantic leads. We’ve made progress, and we just have to keep pushing forward and breaking down some of these walls.How did it feel to make your debut at Carnegie Hall?It was very difficult for me to enjoy it fully. It has been a challenging year for me personally. On May 8, my father passed away. And the following week, after the funeral, I left to get on a plane to prepare for my debut with the Cleveland Orchestra singing the role of Otello. I arrived in New York on Nov. 10 to begin my cover contract with the Met for “Aida.” On Nov. 14, my eldest sister passed away.It has been an emotional roller coaster for me. One never knows how grief will manifest itself. And grief is a very sneaky thing. And it pops up on you at very odd times, and you never know what’s going to trigger it. I was able to make it through because of the strength of my faith and knowing that my loved ones were in complete support of me and my career and would have wanted me to be where I was.What did your family say to you after the performance?My mother walked up to me and gave me a hug and a kiss and said: “God bless you. I’m extremely proud of you.” My oldest brother, whenever I go to perform, he always reminds me to make the family proud. And his response on Friday night was, “That’s how you make us proud.” More

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      With Different Singers, One Opera Classic Can Seem Like Two

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      Alongside a winning “L’Elisir d’Amore,” our critic returned to four works at the Met in the middle of their runs to hear new rotations of artists.As the first act of Verdi’s “La Traviata” ends, Violetta, a high-end prostitute, is suffering the symptoms of tuberculosis. A well-to-do young man’s declaration of love shakes her seen-it-all cynicism; should she put an end to her life of pleasure and accept him?Screw it, she decides: As champagne fizzes of coloratura rise and rise, she declares that she is “forever free” and brings the curtain down in defiance.At the Metropolitan Opera in November, the soprano Nadine Sierra sang that moment with luxuriant ease and confidence, a woman certain that she still had all the time in the world. On Sunday at the Met, though, Ermonela Jaho — her tone far less plush than Sierra’s and the aria less easy for her — made it a kind of mad scene. Violetta’s fragility, her sleep-when-I’m-dead mania, were scarily center stage.Same words, same notes, an entirely different effect: This is one of the best parts of my job. In addition to attending first nights at the Met with other critics — as on Tuesday, when a delightful revival of “L’Elisir d’Amore” opened with the power to make you giggle one minute and choke up the next — I spent the last few weeks returning to four classic titles in the middle of their runs to see them with new rotations of singers.Especially in the standard repertory, the Met often cycles through multiple casts in a single season — and then does it again, year after year, Violetta after Violetta after Violetta. Ticket sales in this not-quite-post-pandemic period have blinked red lights at this practice. Houses are full for new productions, even of contemporary works. But revivals, less obviously newsworthy and less widely promoted, are no longer certain draws.The tenor Javier Camarena, center, emanates sincerity and modesty in “L’Elisir d’Amore.”Marty Sohl/Metropolitan OperaThere is not the audience there once was to hear “La Traviata” twice over a couple of months. There is not even the audience there once was to hear it twice over a couple of years.Which is something to mourn. Being a lover of the performing arts is about the thirst for the new play and concerto. But it’s also about relishing the Hamlet of cool distance next to the one of slovenly aggression; about how Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony can be noble or ferocious in the hands of different orchestras and conductors; about how each new soprano increases our sense of what is possible in a work, and suggests how capacious we are, too.Not that every contrast is quite as extreme as in the Met’s “Traviata” this season. In November I had been impressed by Sierra, who in her mid-30s is coming into her own vocally. But, as in her sumptuously sung “Lucia di Lammermoor” last year, she has not yet solved one of opera’s fundamental challenges: making rich, ample tone convey desperation, illness and frailty.Desperation, illness and frailty happen to be Ermonela Jaho’s stock in trade. We often hear about opera singers being larger than life onstage; Jaho manages to be smaller, to give the sense of death incarnate, a walking, singing corpse.About 15 years Sierra’s senior, she has a slender, meticulous sound that she doesn’t push to be bigger than it is. Her “Ah, fors’è lui” and “Dite alla giovine” were murmured reveries, ghosts of tone; you got the sensation of thousands of people in the audience leaning in to overhear private musings. I can’t remember experiencing such prolonged passages of extremely soft yet palpable singing in the Met’s huge theater, which artists often think they need to scream to fill.Jaho can be shamelessly old-school; this was probably the most coughing I’d ever heard from a Violetta, and her “Addio, del passato” in the final act milked every wide-eyed tremble and gasp for air. She didn’t summon the fullness of voice that an ideal Violetta requires, at least at certain moments. But Jaho unsettlingly lives this unsettling opera, providing a sensitive, unique vision of a classic.The tenor Ismael Jordi, making his Met debut as Alfredo this season, was on Sunday a gawky more than dashing presence, who spread mellow legato lines like schmears of cream cheese. The baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat is also making a company debut — this one rather more impressive — as Alfredo’s father, the elder Germont, with his burnished-mahogany “Di Provenza il mar” providing the most deeply satisfying singing of anyone onstage.In another Verdi work, “Rigoletto,” the shift of personnel marked a less dramatic change but resulted in a keen performance. On Dec. 17, the soprano Lisette Oropesa sang Gilda with a tone a few shades brighter and more finely vibrating than the softer-grain Rosa Feola had earlier in the fall.Lisette Oropesa, left, and Luca Salsi in Verdi’s “Rigoletto.”Ken Howard/Metropolitan OperaThe baritone Luca Salsi, in the title role, sounded firmer and less haunted than had Quinn Kelsey, with his echoey, indelibly wounded voice. The tenor Stephen Costello sang with blithe, poised arrogance — and his characteristic physical stiffness, his stock gestures, somehow worked. He became something of an automaton of power.When “Aida” — yet more Verdi — opened in the beginning of December, it was one of the season’s shakier efforts, with Latonia Moore struggling in the title role. Michelle Bradley had always been scheduled to take on the part in the new year, but her entrance was accelerated when Moore dropped out after the first performance.I returned on Dec. 27, and found Bradley in pleasant form: a demure, even reticent Aida. The tenor Brian Jagde was more nuanced, if also less steady, than he had been in his unrelenting first performance a few weeks earlier.The mezzo-soprano Olesya Petrova, who stayed on in the run when Anita Rachvelishvili, who was supposed to replace her, canceled after a single evening, also seemed more settled in. The most salutary change was Kelsey, who turned from Rigoletto to Amonasro, and who gave his trademark smoky tone and aura of threat to a role that, earlier in the month, George Gagnidze had rendered merely tight and querulous.In the machine that is the Met’s abridged holiday presentation of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” the baritone Benjamin Taylor, the second-cast Papageno, was the highlight on Dec. 28, his voice compact yet resonant, his charisma easygoing without being cloying. But for charm, even he couldn’t beat this “L’Elisir d’Amore.”Donizetti’s comedy is one of my favorite operas, but it can easily go awry. While laugh-out-loud funny, it is not a farce. Bartlett Sher’s quaint production interpolates a bit too much physical violence, presumably to raise the emotional stakes, but understands that the piece is at heart a small, sweet romance, drawing both smiles and tears.Thankfully, a cast led by the tenor Javier Camarena and the soprano Golda Schultz, and the spirited conductor Michele Gamba, in his Met debut, trust “Elisir” to reach the corners of the vast Met without overstatement or caricature.Camarena, as always, emanates sincerity and modesty; his Nemorino is a simple guy, but not a buffoon. After the slightest bit of burr to his top notes early on, they were pure and ringing by the end, and his “Una furtiva lagrima” began conversationally before breaking into golden rhapsody.Schultz’s tone had the gentle, silky glow of moonlight, but with a glisten that penetrated, and she gave a sense of both Adina’s independence and her vulnerability. The baritone Davide Luciano was suave as the conceited army sergeant Belcore; as the quack doctor Dulcamara, who provides the cheap wine that Nemorino takes as a love potion, the baritone Ambrogio Maestri was robust without being over-the-top.This was as lovely as opera gets. And it’s not over yet. After five more performances with this cast through January, “Elisir” comes back in April with Aleksandra Kurzak; the newcomers Xabier Anduaga and Jonah Hoskins; Joshua Hopkins; and Alex Esposito.Before that, in March, the soprano Angel Blue will star when “La Traviata” returns yet again. What will she add to Sierra’s and Jaho’s angles on the doomed, desperate Violetta? I know I’ll be there in the audience, ready to find yet more facets in these diamonds of the repertory. More

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      Angel Blue Withdraws From Opera, Citing ‘Blackface’ in Netrebko’s ‘Aida’

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      The American soprano Angel Blue said she would not appear at the Arena di Verona after the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and other performers wore dark makeup in its production of “Aida.”A leading American soprano, Angel Blue, announced this week that she was withdrawing from her planned debut at the Arena di Verona in Italy to protest its use of “blackface makeup” in a production of Verdi’s “Aida” that starred the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko.“The use of blackface under any circumstances, artistic or otherwise, is a deeply misguided practice based on archaic theatrical traditions which have no place in modern society,” Blue, a Black soprano with a growing international career, said in a statement on social media, adding that she would withdraw from her upcoming performances in “La Traviata,” another Verdi opera. “It is offensive, humiliating and outright racist. Full stop.”Many leading opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, have only recently stopped the practice of having white singers darken their skin with stage makeup to perform the title roles in “Aida” and “Otello,” long after minstrel shows, blackface roles and other types of performances that rely on makeup that echoes racist caricatures disappeared from many stages. But the practice is still common in parts of Europe and Russia, and Netrebko has been a vocal proponent of wearing dark makeup.In an interview on Friday, Blue said she was disturbed when she saw photos of the production, including some that showed dancers and singers in dark makeup, circulating on social media on Monday evening while she was in Paris for another performance.“I was shocked; I just felt really weird in my spirit,” she said. “I just felt like I couldn’t go and sing and associate myself with this tradition.”Netrebko, who is trying to rebuild her career after losing a number of engagements following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because of her history of support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, posted photos on her Instagram this week showing her in extremely dark makeup and braids as she sang the role of Aida, an Ethiopian princess, in Verona.One of the photos the soprano Anna Netrebko shared on Instagram of the makeup she wore in a production of “Aida” at the Arena di Verona in Italy.Soon, Netrebko’s Instagram page was flooded with more than 1,000 comments, with many people denouncing her for using makeup that they said was racist and recalled blackface. She was not the only one in “Aida” who had darkened her skin: Some of her co-stars performed in the dark makeup, as did a different cast that appeared in the opera when it opened last month.A spokesman for Netrebko did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Netrebko has been a vocal defender of the practice, arguing that it helps maintain the authenticity of centuries-old works. When the Met tried to stop her from using makeup to darken her skin during a production of “Aida” in 2018, she went to a tanning salon instead. In 2019, appearing with dark makeup in a production of “Aida” at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, she wrote on Instagram, “Black Face and Black Body for Ethiopian princess, for Verdi greatest opera! YES!”The Arena di Verona noted in a statement that it had been performing this production of “Aida” for two decades, and that it was well known when Blue agreed to appear this summer.“Every country has different roots, and their cultural and social structures developed along different historical and cultural paths,” it said in a statement. “Sensibilities and approaches on the same subject might widely vary in different parts of the world.”It added: “We have no reason nor intent whatsoever to offend and disturb anyone’s sensibility.”While Netrebko has not addressed the recent controversy, her husband, the tenor Yusif Eyvazov, who also appeared in the production of “Aida” in Verona, lashed out at Blue. In a social media post, he called Blue’s decision “disgusting,” and questioned why she had not withdrawn last month when “Aida” opened, with a different cast that also used dark makeup. (That cast included the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as “Aida.”)Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, where Eyvazov is a regular performer, sent a letter to Eyvazov on Friday calling his remarks “hateful,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.“There is no room at the Met for artists who are so meanspirited in their thinking,” Gelb wrote in the letter.Gelb, who cut ties with Netrebko this year because of her previous support for Putin, said in an interview that he had not yet decided whether he would penalize Eyvazov. “We’re considering what steps we might take,” he said.Blue said her decision was not personal, and that she was not targeting Netrebko or her husband.“My decision doesn’t have anything to do with them,” she said in the interview. “My decision has to do with my convictions,” she added, saying that she had felt moved to take a stand against “something that is hurtful to people who look like me.”Blue said she hoped that more opera houses would eliminate blackface as they work to bring diversity to the stage.“In order to keep opera relevant in today’s society, there’s no place for blackface,” she said. “I felt hurt by what I saw because I feel like that’s a tradition that they’re trying to hold onto that hurts people.”Eyvazov’s manager said he was unavailable for comment on Friday.The decision by Blue, who has become a favorite at the Met Opera in recent seasons and who appeared this summer at the Paris Opera in Gounod’s “Faust,” was praised by many fellow singers and American opera executives.The revival of “Aida” in Verona is among Netrebko’s first staged opera engagements since her return to performing in late April as she tried to repair her career after being shunned in the United States and parts of Europe for her ties to Putin. 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      A New ‘Aida’ Lands in the Middle of France’s Culture Wars

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA New ‘Aida’ Lands in the Middle of France’s Culture WarsThe production, which examines the work’s colonial legacy, opened after the far right accused the Paris Opera of “antiracism gone mad.”In Lotte de Beer’s new staging of “Aida,” the famous Triumphal March scene becomes a series of tableaux vivants inspired by Western art history.Credit…Vincent PontetMarch 10, 2021, 1:47 p.m. ETWhen Lotte de Beer’s new production of Verdi’s “Aida” recently premiered at the Paris Opera — not to a full house, but to an audience online — she was just relieved it was happening.“This might have been my hardest project ever,” de Beer said in a video interview. “We had crisis after crisis after crisis.”The development of her staging, which is streaming on Arte.tv through Aug. 20, came amid a labor dispute at the Paris Opera that was quickly followed by a full pandemic shutdown and an earlier than expected transfer of power in the company’s leadership. She was working with multiple casts at once, including star singers like the tenor Jonas Kaufmann, whose busy schedules made them less than ideally available for rehearsals. And the production had to be continually adapted to coronavirus restrictions.And then there is the ideological quagmire into which this “Aida” was born. The Paris Opera, like many other institutions, has during the past year been forced, even by its own employees, to come to terms with its poor track record of racial representation, as well as practices like blackface and Orientalist caricature.In doing so, it has become a target of far-right leaders — including Marine Le Pen, who decried comments by the Paris Opera’s new director, Alexander Neef, as “antiracism gone mad.” In the pages of Le Monde, Neef, who is German but has held posts at the Canadian Opera Company and Santa Fe Opera, was accused of soaking up “la culture américaine.”“These operas are part of our history, part of what makes us who we are,” said de Beer, whose “Aida” wrestles with the work’s problematic past.Credit…David Payr for The New York TimesPlanning for the new “Aida” predated Neef’s tenure, but it fits squarely in this moment of the Paris Opera’s history. Verdi’s 1871 tragedy, a love story set in a time of war between ancient Egypt and Ethiopia, is often given the treatment of a “Cleopatra”-like costume drama. But de Beer, who will become the director of the Vienna Volksoper next year, has offered a version so unusual that its Aida, the soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, pleaded on Instagram before opening night for her fans to “open your minds to something completely different.”De Beer’s production is set in the 19th century, around the time of the opera’s premiere. Yet that sounds more specific than it comes across in practice. Her staging exists in a flexible, metaphor-heavy space that acts, by turns, as a colonial museum of ancient artifacts and natural history, including a prominently displayed skull that recalls pseudoscientific justifications of white supremacy; a frantic stage of tableaux vivants inspired by double-edged images of Western superiority, like Americans raising the flag on Iwo Jima; and the chilling depths of the Suez Canal, which opened two years before “Aida.”With an occasionally chaotic blend of aesthetics — a winking embrace of kitsch, Bunraku-style puppetry, and designs by the artist Virginia Chihota, who is based in Ethiopia — de Beer examines the work’s Orientalist undertones and legacy in a world of changing sensibilities.The soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, left, as Aida. She sings the role alongside a Bunraku-style puppet.Credit…Vincent PontetAcknowledging that her approach eschews literal interpretation at almost every turn, de Beer said: “I do understand that if you’re expecting a one-to-one ‘Aida,’ where she is an Ethiopian slave and he is an Egyptian army leader, you’re not getting exactly what you expected. And yeah, what can I say about that?”In fact, she had plenty to say — about the ideas behind her production and what it means to love an art form with a problematic past. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.How was your production influenced by its casting of mostly white singers?I think they first did the casting, and then they asked a couple of directors, who all said no. So in a late phase for a house like this, I was asked.It’s a challenge. It’s a piece that I love, but also a piece that I’m critical of. It was clear that race needed to be discussed, but couldn’t be discussed by way of casting. I also knew that I wanted a non-Western and preferably African view, which is why I asked Virginia Chihota to be, as a visual artist, my partner in making this show. I didn’t just want to use her visuals; I wanted her take on the piece.And what did you come up with?I wanted to portray the piece on two levels. I wanted to give the story inside the piece, which is a very strong story: It has a political line; it’s about war; it’s about patriotism; it’s about loyalty; it’s about status and the loss of status. But it’s also a love story.I also knew I wanted to portray the story of the piece itself. The music is beautiful; I love it. But it has borrowed a lot of other cultures’s musics and turned them into Orientalist clichés — in brilliant ways, but it’s problematic seen from our times. And its premiere coincided with the opening of the Suez Canal, which itself was a colonial tool.I thought it would be interesting to create the metaphor of the colonial art museum where looted art objects are being exhibited, because right now in France, that’s a big discussion going on: Do we give these artifacts back? Who do they belong to?From left, Ksenia Dudnikova as Amneris, Jonas Kaufmann as Radamès, and Soloman Howard as the King in the production, whose wide-ranging aesthetic includes a winking embrace of kitsch.Credit…Vincent PontetYour ambivalence about “Aida” could apply to a lot of operas.You fall in love with these characters — feel with them, cry with them, die with them. But on a certain level, you can detach from that and think about these pieces and the representation of the characters. What I hope is that it’s like reading your own diary 10 years after you’ve written it, and you can look at yourself and go: My God, what a crazy teenager I was, but of course this turned me into who I am.These operas are part of our history, part of what makes us who we are — both in the completely positive and the completely negative senses. I think if we can embrace both and acknowledge both, that might actually teach us something about our future.How would you feel as an audience member at a more traditional “Aida”?For me it’s boring, but it’s also offensive. I think if we continue in that way, we give people such good ammunition to say: Why are we sponsoring these big opera houses?The irony, of course, is that a production like yours makes some people ask that same question.Quite a lot, I’ve noticed. I have to say that the negative reviews didn’t affect me as much as some negative reviews have affected me in the past, because it’s been almost an ideological argument. Those are also people who really love this art form. And I will soon be leading my own opera house, where I’m sure a large part of the audience might think that way. It’s my job to reach out to them and take their worries seriously.It’s a matter of mind-set, because opera is music theater. Music, you don’t need to update; it is an abstract language. If you hear music that was composed 400 years ago, it communicates in the same way to your soul. But theater is about ideas, texts, jokes. It’s about interpersonal relationships. And those change. That’s why the spoken theater tradition is very different from the music tradition. And in opera, those will always rub up against each other. That’s why I love it.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More