Grey, grey and more grey: Aida, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
From our UK edition
Grey. More grey. So very, very grey. That’s the main visual impression left by Robert Carsen’s new production of Verdi’s Aida. Possibly a few older operagoers still think of Aida as a fabulous spectacle: horses, temples, caparisoned elephants and all the gilded splendour of the Pharaohs. But if you cut your opera-going teeth more recently than 1990 – and unless you’re going to one of the more lavish Ellen Kent efforts – you’ll know by now to expect nothing of the sort. Carsen places the drama within the towering walls of a government bunker in some unspecified modern military dictatorship, with the cast (even Aida and Amneris) dressed almost entirely in shades of khaki.
