Little Egypt Off Broadway

The Metropolitan Opera's Margaret Webster hoped "that the [opening night] audience will not look for anything especially startling or different in [our new] Aida, for I don't think they will find it." That, as General Manager Rudolf Bing later remarked, was only because Margaret Webster had never seen Aida before. To him, "it looks completely different--and I have seen it before."

Those in the gala audience who had also seen Aida before were a good bet to side with Rudolf Bing on opening night this week. They would not even have to look around for something startling and different: the stunning new sets and costumes were designed to smack them right in the eyes.

Wobbling Sphinxes. To build the new production of Verdi's triumphal tragedy of the Nile, Bing had brought in the same crack team that gave Verdi's Don Carlo a new glow last season: Broadway's Maggie Webster and Designer Rolf Gerard. They soon found out what everyone from Bing to Conductor Fausto Cleva definitely did not want: "All those wobbling sphinxes, painted canvas temples, unrehearsed supers in ridiculous costumes, and four-footed beasts." They set out to make the new Aida "as simple and uncluttered as possible."

Making up for her neglect of A'ida, Maggie Webster spent hours with score and libretto, and decided that there was more to it than mere heart-warming and blood-tingling melodrama--more than "Love, Jealousy and Sacrifice in capital letters." As in Don Carlo, she found in Aida the "tragedy of individuals caught up in a conflict with the dictates of an autocracy." She also decided to start fresh with her stage direction, and not delve into the "encrustations of tradition."

Purples & Pinks. For his part, Designer Gerard wanted to create an "effect" of Egypt that the modern eye could accept and believe. Emphasizing massiveness ("a Rockefeller Center without windows") rather than the usual archeological detail, his Egypt sometimes seems closer to Broadway than the Nile. Even so, it is effective: his third-act temple looms 36 feet high, four feet higher than his Don Carlo sets (which broke Met records). As he did in Don Carlo, he moved everything down close to the footlights so that many in the Met's 500 "blind" seats could see. But what would especially hit the audiences is color--reds, blues, greens, purples, pinks and yellows. Seldom in its history had the Met's old stage flashed with such brilliant array as in the second-act pageant where Radames returns in triumph from his campaign against the Ethiopians; the scene onstage comes close to matching the color of Verdi's music.

Old Shakespearean Webster hoped "that the shade of Verdi may be heard to murmur 'I have not been betrayed.' " A first-rate cast was listed to do its part: Veteran Soprano Zinka Milanov as Aiia, Elena Nikolaidi as Amneris, new Italian Tenor Mario del Monaco as Radames and George London as Amonasro. Some first-nighters might even hear Verdi's shade murmur,"In better shape than e'er I was."

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