HOT avoids ‘Aida’ mishaps with focus on music, voices

Hawaii Opera Theatre opened its 2012 season Friday with Verdi’s "Aida," one of the most beloved of operas for 140 years.

Through the decades, "Aida" became legend for its grand-opera spectacle and exotic Egyptian setting. New productions often vied for ever-grander scale: million-dollar sets, lavish costumes and parades of half-naked exotic dancers and live animals. In step with that reputation were the legendary mishaps of failed machinery, costume malfunctions and animals doing what animals will do.

HOT’s production team — director Henry Akina, designer Peter Dean Beck, costumer Helen Rodgers and conductor Ivan Tōrzs —neatly sidestepped the exoticism and spectacle to focus on the music and great singing, which is what makes "Aida" truly great, and which was uniformly excellent in this performance.

There are two pairs of deadly rivals in this opera, one in love, the other in war. The rivals in love are Amneris, the Egyptian princess, and her slave Aida, the Ethiopian princess, both of whom love the same man, Ramades, a captain of the guard who is chosen to command the Egyptian forces.

The rivals in war ought to be the two kings, but the Egyptian king is more a figurehead in this story. The real power lies in Ramfis, the Egyptian high priest, with his hordes of disciples, whose rival is Amonasro, the Ethiopian king and Aida’s father.

For rivals in love, Akina cast sisters, soprano Lori Phillips as Aida and mezzo-soprano Mary Phillips as Amneris. They made a compelling pair, and their voices matched in strength, expression and even somewhat in timbre. Their characters moved as paired opposites: one loved, one scorned; one in power, one enslaved; one veiled in white in triumph, one veiled in black in loss; Aida steadfast, Amneris in opulent new robes in almost every scene.

For rivals in war, Akina cast bass Andrew Gangestad in his HOT debut as Ramfis and Hawaii’s home-grown opera star baritone Quinn Kelsey as Amonasro. These, too, were paired opposites — one in robes, one in rags; one bald, one in waist-length dreadlocks — but both powerful, excellent singers. It has been delightful to watch Kelsey develop into a professional lead; he was truly outstanding, in acting as well as singing.

The hero Ramades stands above both sets of rivals, his honor intact, his love for Aida his only weakness. Ramades was sung by Mexican lyric tenor José Luis Duval, also in his HOT debut. Duval was quite simply terrific, distinct yet complementing each of the rivals in duets and ensembles.

All five leads gave stellar performances.

HOT has become quite the family affair for the Kelseys. While Quinn Kelsey was singing a lead, his mother, Debbie Kelsey, sang in the chorus, and his sister Blythe Kelsey-Takemasa sang as the high priestess. Kelsey-Takemasa was featured in one of those signature Akina touches, the spicing up of the temple scene with human sacrifice, the priestesses dipping their hands in blood as the lights flooded the stage red.

Gory, but fun.

Other local notables included Kaweo Kanoho as the messenger, who has a wonderful lyric tenor voice, and bass Leon Williams as the king.

Beck chose a simple, effective design, hanging swaths of cloth on slender wooden frames mounted on shallow steps, the vertical swaths serving as walls and backdrops and the angled swaths suggesting pyramids and temples. Changes in setting were created with nuanced lighting.

Costumes seemed to run the gamut, from spot-on to puzzling.

Akina’s staging of his leads was, as usual, excellent, and those intimate scenes — the solos, the duets, the small ensembles, and especially Act III — were highlights of this production. Larger scenes were less clear, but there were also lovely touches, as when the chorus parades with little lights in the background, suggesting a slow swirl of lights on water.

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Ruth O. Bingham received her doctorate in musicology from Cornell University and has been reviewing the musical arts for more than 20 years.