Ellen Kents Aida

Does Aida need a horse? No. But I guess horses are cheaper than elephants

Unfortunately I was unable to make it so nothing to report but I know the EK production does the rounds every year or so, so hopefully next year I'll get there.

If I may resurrect this thread – Mr Snow, do you mean you hope to see great from an Ellen Kent production of Aida or from any production?

If you mean the latter, then it has been my great privilege to hear what I consider the best ever Aida and Radames at Covent Garden in 1962 when Galina Vishnevskaya sang Aida opposite Jon Vickers as Radames. To say it was sensational would be an understatement and I can still hear Vickers at the end of Act III with his brilliantly incisive: 'Sacerdoti! Io resto a te!' A thrilling end to a thrilling Nile Scene, and the rest of the evening was just as good. My two best Amnerises were Giulietta Simionato and Fiorenza Cossotto.  Amy Shuard and Charles Craig were an ever-reliable pair of lovers and of course Shuard was hugely popular with the Covent Garden audiences back in the 1960s, but Vishnevskaya and Vickers lifted Aida to another plane entirely.

Being an Aussie, I am Anthony with an 'h' but my Italian grandfather after whom I was named was actually Antonino so that's what I should have been christened and then I could be Nino – much classier than Tony or Toni, at least that's what I think.
N.

I saw a few of Ellen Kent's opera presentations in Manchester a few years back and hated the productions , they were so cheap and very amateurish , despite some good singers, including Aida which had a procession of a large number of locally recruited blacked-up slaves in chains, sack cloth outfits and Phyllis Diller wigs . Ludicrous. The barber of Seville was just a cheap production and boring , Rigoletto was better but I think the courtiers had provided their own shoes, lots of tatty trainers on view. The storm scene was an off stage fan with someone throwing on screwed up pages from the Manchester evening news.
Norma was surprisingly well sung, for one night only , stand and deliver , Druid outfits and some stone henge type boulders .

I know Frankie Howerd used to say: 'Don't mock the afflicted' but I can't resist adding my diary note on an Ellen Kent 'Aida' to what bimse has said:

AIDA (Wimbledon) – I stayed only until the end of the Triumph Scene. The good things about the production were the amazingly lavish costumes (even Amonasro had more gold around his neck than there is in the current UK reserves) and the splendid sets, as well as the chorus and the three deep-voiced men singing Amonasro, Ramphis and the King who were all top class. Sadly the three main principals were all inadequate in various ways. The Aida had a big voice but paid scant attention to Verdi’s note values and her pitching of most of her high notes was wild to say the least. Even the final note of her very first phrase was a semitone flat! And her acting ability was non-existent. The Amneris was a better singer but the voice was too soft-grained to do justice to the music and her acting was only marginally better than Aida’s. The Korean tenor belted out ‘Celeste Aida’ as if it was Otello’s ‘Esultate’ and then seemed exhausted for the rest of the time! He ducked the final high note on ‘Immenso Ftha’, opting to sing a third lower on the same note as the penultimate ‘Immenso Ftha’ and then in the ensemble at the end of the Triumph Scene he barely moved his lips most of the time, indicating that he was not bothering to sing, except on the couple of occasions where he clearly had the main line. It was also a serious mistake inviting the local dancing school to provide students for the production. The four rather ungainly girls who performed the Blackamoor dance in Act II Scene 1 were ghastly, and were still completing their uninspired routine four bars after the orchestra had finished! Several other gawky teenagers dressed the stage during the ballet in the Triumph Scene, which was danced by six proper ballet dancers but to poor choreography, and the Ethiopian prisoners, all wearing nasty black curly wigs, were a frightful mixture of very young children and some particularly ugly adults, whom I took to be the staff of the school! The orchestra was competent, but lacked enough strings to balance the over-enthusiastic brass. But the conducting was good, and I was particularly impressed at the way the conductor managed to hold everything together even when the people onstage were being rhythmically wayward! I decided to leave before the Nile Scene because although I would have enjoyed hearing Amonasro’s contribution, I felt that the subsequent duet between Radames and Aida would be fairly dire, and Act IV would be even less acceptable, especially as it seemed that Radames had sung himself out, Aida could not sing in tune and Amneris had insufficient vocal and dramatic power to make the Judgement Scene work.