“Aida” wraps an operatic CSO season with high-voltage Verdi
“Aida” wraps an operatic CSO season with high-voltage Verdi
Standing imperiously, with her dark mascara and long black tresses, the tall Georgian mezzo-soprano looked like she meant business before she sang a note.
The evening was stolen lock, stock and barrel by Anita Rachvelishvili who delivered a rock-star performance as the villainous Amneris. Standing imperiously, with her dark mascara and long black tresses, the tall Georgian mezzo-soprano looked like she meant business before she sang a note.
It’s a rare Aida where the opening scene of Act IV is the dramatic high point of the night but such was the case on Friday. The mezzo brought rich sable tone and almost unhinged intensity to Amneris’s climactic scene, with the agitated princess caught between her unrequited love for Radames, her angry jealousy at Aida and thirst for revenge on both. The degree of emotional desperation in Rachvelishvili’s singing was nearly clinical and wholly riveting–the kind of head back, old-fashioned, no-holds-barred singing one rarely encounters in the opera house today. Wow.