Review: The Met’s New ‘Aida’ Stages Spectacle Without Horses - The New York Times

Michael Mayer directs Verdi’s classic as an archaeologist’s discovery, featuring the shining soprano Angel Blue.

In a new production of Verdi’s “Aida” at the Metropolitan Opera, the tenor Piotr Beczala, left, plays the warrior Radamès and the soprano Angel Blue is Aida. Credit...Sara Krulwich/ Zachary Woolfe By Zachary Woolfe Jan. 1, 2025 

For a long time, people went to the Metropolitan Opera for the horses. 

 They looked to the Met, the country’s largest performing arts institution, for the kind of gaudily realistic splendor that popped even from the nosebleed seats: huge sets rising and falling, cast-of-thousands crowd scenes, and, yes, live animals. 

 Over the past quarter-century, most of those aging dog and pony shows of the 1980s and ’90s have been replaced. With the Met now facing grim financial troubles, those replacements have tended to be cheaper, with fewer and less bulky sets. They’ve often been updated, like a “Lucia di Lammermoor” in a trashy postindustrial America and “Rigoletto” in Rat Pack Las Vegas. The onstage menagerie has been vanishing. 

 On Tuesday, the company rang in the new year with a new version of Verdi’s Pharaonic classic “Aida” starring the shining soprano Angel Blue, 36 years since the premiere of the chariot-dotted last one. The sets have been streamlined; an intermission has been snipped. There was not a horse in sight. 

 The director is Michael Mayer, a Broadway veteran whose work at the Met includes that neon-drenched Vegas “Rigoletto” as well as a “La Traviata” in preposterous Disney princess crinolines. His “Aida,” which has some 65,000 seats to sell this season alone, has the carefully strategic feel of some presidential campaigns, desperate not to lose its base while trying to appeal to new voters with a veneer of freshness.

 So, during Verdi’s delicate prelude, down from the flies rappels a modern-day archaeologist in an Indiana Jones fedora. He gazes around the looming, dimly lit interior of an ancient Egyptian temple, dusts off an object he finds on the ground, and holds it up to a shaft of light. Suddenly the walls fill in with richly colored hieroglyphs and the action of “Aida” can begin. 

 We are meant to understand that the opera’s plot — a tightly conceived tale of warring Egyptians and Ethiopians torn between love and patriotic duty — is in part the fantasy of this adventurer and his colleagues, who uncover the story as they tramp through and silently observe the scenes that follow. 

The idea is to remind us that “Aida” is a depiction of exotic lands and peoples created by and for Europeans. If you strain, you can hear a distant echo of the influential scholar Edward Said, who included this opera among the Western artworks he critiqued for exploiting non-Western cultures.

 People dressed as early 20th century archaeologists carry a gold elephant on a platform resting on their shoulders. During the Triumphal March, the archaeologists parade through, carrying out antiquities.

Credit...Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

But for anyone in the audience who hadn’t read an interview with Mayer, it might have seemed like extras in safari outfits were randomly walking around. Only in one brief sequence does his framing device do any clear political work: During the Triumphal March, instead of the Egyptians bringing in the treasure looted from the Ethiopians they’ve conquered, the archaeologists parade through, carrying out the antiquities that are (if you’re of a certain ideological persuasion) simply another, more broadly acceptable version of war booty. 

 Mostly, though, Mayer’s “Aida” is blandly old-fashioned, without real poetry, theatricality or fun. His frame lends itself to this: If the opera is being depicted as an appropriative fantasy, the point is only furthered if it’s stagy and stale. 

 Just as in the old production, the visuals are dominated by weathered hieroglyphs, even if they’re no longer painted on. (The company 59 designed the projections splashed on Christine Jones’s boxy sets.) The great tenor Enrico Caruso, who died in 1921, would have recognized the park-and-bark, arms-outstretched gestures and Susan Hilferty’s Cecil B. DeMille-style costumes. Thrown into the mix is Oleg Glushkov’s awkwardly thrusting choreography. 

 It’s great to finally have a Met “Aida” that’s over in three hours rather than four. But eliminating the second intermission — and without even bringing the curtain down between the third and fourth acts — means that Act III, Verdi’s evocative dream of the banks of the Nile by moonlight, has to take place in the same boring temple as Act IV. 

 Not to mention that making those two acts continuous is jarring, since in the plot at least a bit of time needs to have passed. Mayer makes a bunch of strange little choices like this, with characters appearing earlier or later than they’re supposed to. And his production has a last silly notion: The jealous Egyptian princess Amneris, who usually ends the opera in mourning, stabs herself in the stomach at the final blackout, as if she has wandered in from a performance of “Madama Butterfly.” 

 It was possible to take the measure of the staging on opening night, but more difficult to evaluate the cast, which was dominated by the ailing, unaccountably performing Piotr Beczala. 

 From his labored opening aria as the Egyptian warrior Radamès, this usually superb tenor was obviously sick, and it was announced at the end of intermission that he was recovering from a bad cold. Why, then, did the Met’s administration let him go on in the first place — and then return in the second half? 

 It was hard to tell how this affected his fellow singers. The bass Dmitry Belosselskiy sounded fuzzily distant as the brutal high priest, Ramfis; Morris Robinson was a solid King of Egypt. 

 The baritone Quinn Kelsey was firmly commanding as Amonasro, the Ethiopian ruler and the father of Aida, who has been captured and enslaved by the Egyptians. She and Radamès are secretly in love, enraging Amneris, sung at the Met by the mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi, who has a loud, wavering voice and a campy gift for staggering around the stage in despair, clutching her head. 

 Blue, the soprano, has lately struggled to put across the wistful sophistication of “La Rondine” and the stylized sensuality of “Ainadamar.” But she was a lovely Aida, tapping into the sympathetically suffering vein of her Violetta in “La Traviata” and, despite some lack of richness in her middle voice, singing with ardent elegance and free, clear high notes. 

 The chorus answered the score’s call for everything from stentorian cries to ethereal rituals. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, conducted an energetically paced if blunt performance. 

 A revival this fall of Herbert Wernicke’s 2001 staging of Strauss’s “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” was a reminder that old-style grandeur is possible in an intelligent, modern vein. I’m fine with taking the horses out of “Aida.” But Mayer doesn’t find a contemporary analogue for them — for the kind of visual and theatrical wonder that the Met used to provide better than anyone. 

 Aida Continues, with cast changes, through May 9 at the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org. 

 Zachary Woolfe is the classical music critic of The Times. More about Zachary Woolfe A version of this article appears in print on Jan. 2, 2025, Section C, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Streamlined and Horseless Classic. 

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Why I Am Suing My Church: Because Elections Matter, Even For Churches

News Why I Am Suing My Church: Because Elections Matter, Even For Churches By blackstar Updated on: November 14, 2024 Join our Whatsapp Channel For The Latest News Join Now By Dr. Kevin McGruder

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“Do not major in bylaws and minor in the Bible…. America is counting on you, Abyssinian. This is holy ground, not a battleground.” These were remarks made by Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock at the September 29th installation ceremony for Rev. Kevin R. Johnson, the announced new pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Warnock, as a legislator, advising a congregation to not to ‘major in bylaws’ when electing its new pastor was oddly unusual, particularly at a time when this country was moments away from perhaps the most consequential presidential election in our history. Further, he had been on the frontlines campaigning for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Harris. One of the central Democratic critiques of the first Trump presidency was the fact that he repeatedly broke the law, the rules. Yet, the Georgia Senator, and former Abyssinian Assistant Pastor, disapprovingly referred to a months-long effort by groups of Abyssinian members to get the church leadership to follow its own rules in selecting a new pastor who would be the successor to Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III, the previous Abyssinian pastor, who died in October of 2022. Our efforts were unsuccessful, largely due to the church leadership’s refusal to adhere to a litany of provisions in the church’s bylaws. In three member-called special meetings, our concerns were ignored and our questions were not answered by church leadership. The search culminated with the June 23rd announcement of Rev. Johnson as pastor, even though he had received only twenty-five percent of the vote of members rather than the majority required by church bylaws. Why is this so important? When a pastor is called to a church by less than a majority of its members, there is potential danger of a church fracture that could alter the institution’s future, proving detrimental to opportunities for growth and its financial well-being. Two weeks after the September installation ceremony, the church and Rev. Johnson were served with legal papers in a lawsuit regarding the pastoral search and election. I am one of the four plaintiffs in the suit. I never expected – or wanted – to be in this position. Each of the plaintiffs have varying reasons for being the public face of this effort, which is supported by dozens of other Abyssinian members. For me, my decades-long history with Abyssinian, and my equally long history of working for nonprofit organizations, left me no other choice in taking what I firmly believe is a step toward saving this church that has lost its way as it relates to governance practices. Like any institution or corporation, survival is impossible when its foundation lacks integrity.

Abyssinian is a religious institution. The First Amendment of the Constitution restricts the government from interfering with most aspects of the activities of churches. But Abyssinian is also a nonprofit organization. Like other nonprofits, its exemption from paying income taxes, which also allows its members to deduct our contributions to the church from our personal income taxes, rests on the fact that, like other nonprofit organizations, it is viewed as a public trust, undertaking activities that are for the public good. Bylaws of nonprofit organizations are the rules that govern their operations. They are developed by the organizations and are expected to be followed, providing organizational consistency as staff and leadership change over the years. They may be amended as needed, but ignoring protocols and bylaws is a sign of serious organizational dysfunction, something that the recent pastoral search and election processes revealed regarding the current governance practices at the Abyssinian Baptist Church that are so egregious that we are asking the court to intervene, after failing to get church leadership to take corrective action. I became a member of Abyssinian in 1987. I had just turned thirty, and having grown up in the church, had stopped attending regularly as an adult, but felt that something was missing from my life. Abyssinian became a central part of my identity. I was a member of its Chancel Choir, Director of Real Estate Development at the Abyssinian Development Corporation, and led its Archives and History Ministry for over a decade, during which professional archives were established. My work with the Archives and History Ministry led me to decide to obtain a Ph.D. in U.S. History, and also provided me with the opportunity to become a co-author of the 2014 Abyssinian bicentennial history book, Witness: Two Hundred Years of African American Faith and Practice at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York. I also served as Assistant Church Clerk, one of the officers of the Church, from 2009 to 2012. When I moved to Ohio in 2012, I maintained my Abyssinian membership, supporting the church financially and watching services online. I often traveled to New York for the February annual church meetings. Abyssinian was founded in 1808 when eleven women and four men of color asked permission to leave the First Baptist Church on Gold Street in Lower Manhattan, a predominantly White congregation. It was the first Black Baptist church established in the state of New York. The 1800s was a period of challenges and small triumphs for Abyssinian, but the church grew and entered the national stage in the twentieth century. Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., pastor from 1908 to 1937, moved the church from midtown to Harlem, and to national prominence through his work with White and Black Progressives of his era. His son, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. succeeded him, and through his concurrent service as the Congressional representative for Harlem, brought the church to international prominence as the “Church of the Masses,” one of the first megachurches with a reported membership of 10,000 people.

After Powell, Jr.’s death in 1972, he was succeeded by Dr. Samuel DeWitt Proctor, who stabilized the church, and then encouraged Abyssinian to be a force for revitalizing its Central Harlem neighborhood by forming the Abyssinian Development Corporation, incorporated in 1989. That same year, Dr. Calvin O. Butts, III succeeded Dr. Proctor as pastor, and continued to build on the foundation that he had inherited. He expanded it in the area of education with establishment of the Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change, a high school and lower school, that are New Vision, smaller public schools. To appreciate why my fellow petitioners and I have taken these steps, it is important to understand that Abyssinian, a flagship Baptist Church in this country with this rich history, is not merely a church. Abyssinian is often looked to as a model of what could be and what should be as a preeminent institution of faith that has been at the forefront of social justice, equality, and civil rights for the Black community. If Abyssinian’s leadership establishes a dangerous blueprint, with this recent election of a pastor, that ignoring bylaws is acceptable, what type of precedence does this set for the governance of other Black Baptist churches going forward? Speaking truth and seeking course correction of this matter has had consequences for me and others. Most recently, at the end of the November 10th Sunday worship service, during which Abyssinian celebrated its 216th anniversary, Rev. Johnson concluded the service by noting that the day before, the Deacon and Trustee Boards had voted unanimously to prohibit any member who was “opposing” the church from continuing to serve in any Abyssinian ministry, the organizations through which most of the day-to-day work of the church is done. Ministries, including choirs and usher boards, are the main vehicles through which members move from Sunday-only attendees to working on activities that strengthen their bonds with other members while creating initiatives that serve Abyssinian and the broader community. Most importantly, as the name implies, serving in an Abyssinian ministry is an opportunity for a member to minister to others like a Christian should.

Rev. Johnson claimed that the recent decision was made at the advice of the church’s attorney, and was meant to achieve “unity” within the church. The statement implies Rev. Johnson and his followers are the “church”. I do not oppose Christ’s church, the congregation of Abyssinian. What I oppose is those who interlope as the church, have a casual disregard for Abyssinian’s bylaws, and show contempt for members of Abyssinian. While I know this latest announcement was meant to isolate and demonize the plaintiffs and others, it was also meant to silence anyone seeking accountability from church leaders, now and in the future, by daring to ask a simple question. It is a page taken out of the playbook of dictators, and it reveals the unethical foundation on which Rev. Johnson and Abyssinian’s church leaders are attempting to build his pastorate that is only a few months old. Contrary to Rev. Dr. Warnock’s remarks at the recent installation service, I believe that all church members need to be double majors, grounding our faith in our knowledge of the Bible, while also understanding the governance practices, represented in, and the integrity required by, our bylaws. Our lawsuit is meant to provide Abyssinian leadership with an opportunity to embark on a course correction and bring our governance practices, in this case the pastoral search and election process, in alignment with our bylaws so that the Abyssinian Baptist Church in the City of New York can move forward into the future as a well-governed, spiritually strong church. Our goal is to restore integrity at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, something that is now in extremely short supply. To support the Restoring Integrity at Abyssinian Effort, go to: https://gofund.me/9d9f98a5