Opera Scotland

Aïda 1908Moody-Manners Opera Company

Read more about the opera Aïda

The exotic Egyptian entertainment had become an instant hit in Scotland, and was this time taken to Aberdeen and Dundee for the first of three successive years.

The complete casts are taken from a programme for 4 March in the Mitchell Library and for 12 March in Aberdeen City Library. Variants among the six principals for 19 March are specified in reviews in the Dundee Advertiser and Dundee Courier & Argus.

 

Dundee Advertiser: Friday, 20 March 1908

Moody-Manners Company - Performance of Aida

'Verdi's Aida was heard last night for the first time in Dundee, and was received with enthusiasm by an audience of splendid proportions and critical discernment.  It was given with every care for effect. The scenic artist and stage manager had contrived that the setting and animation of the story should be as convincing as might be and apart altogether from the music it was a joy to observe the studied realism of the scenery and movement. This was as it should be, for the story is designed to be pictorially impressive, and so to assist the work of the composer. And how glorious is the result of this co-operation of scenic circumstance and musical expression. Where else in grand opera is the Orient so brought to the stage in its semi-barbaric colours, native grandeur of outline, dignity of mode, its strange, persuasive, and brooding atmosphere, and finally, its ocean depth of passion, in which tenderness and tragedy are close companions.

'It was left to Ghislanzoni's libretto and Verdi's music to work this magic - to recall ancient Egypt in its stately splendours of palace and temple and the fervid romance of its spacious life. The curtain rose, and one was transported from the modern world into the period of the Pharaohs. The illusion was complete and abiding, intensifying as the story developed through its four acts until its poignant finale is found in the consigning of the hero Radames in his living tomb, a fate joyfully shared by Aida, the Royal slave maiden, for whose sake he has resigned his chance of life.

'The plot is really magnificent melodrama, inviting intense acting. This it received. The players, individually and collectively, showed a sense of what was required in pose, dances, and ensemble, and thus constantly the  action harmonised with the ample and beautiful fidelity of the backgrounds. Some of these, notably the scene at the gate of Thebes, and the picture of the moonlit Nile in the third act were wonderfully fine. All this charm of scene and the native picturesqueness of the groupings emphasised the interests of the tragedy. That is not only nobly dramatic, but is impulsively human.  Love is its keynote.  Aida, the captive Princess, has won the affection of Radames, the victorious soldier. Amneris, daughter of the King of Egypt, to whom the lovely Ethiopian is slave, secretly adores Radames, and is revenged by the downfall of the soldier.  He is accused of betraying his country, and is condemned to be buried alive.  At the last moment he is offered liberty if he chooses to give up Aida for the Royal bride promised him; but he refuses and the end sees him with his sweetheart together in the vault.

'Here, then, is a theme to inspire the Italian master's gift of writing emotional music.