[Met Tour] CID:133450



Aida
Metropolitan Theatre, Boston, Massachusetts, Thu, March 26, 1942




Aida (452)
Giuseppe Verdi | Antonio Ghislanzoni
Aida
Stella Roman

Radamès
Giovanni Martinelli

Amneris
Bruna Castagna

Amonasro
Leonard Warren

Ramfis
Norman Cordon

King
John Gurney

Messenger
John Dudley

Priestess
Thelma Votipka

Dance
Michael Arshansky

Dance
Ruthanna Boris

Dance
Alexis Kosloff

Dance
Leon Varkas


Conductor
Wilfred Pelletier







Review 1:

Review signed J. W. R. in the Boston Daily Globe

First Appearance Here of Stella Roman as Aida

With its splendid pageantry, dramatic story, great choruses, ballet and spectacularly melodic music, "Aida" should be a fine operatic show. But as the Metropolitan Opera Association presented Verdi's opera at the Metropolitan Theatre last night, it was a disheartengly routine affair.

To be sure, there were moments of rising power during the evening and Mr. Pelletier was a consistent driving force behind the orchestra. But on the whole this was a slack and uninteresting performance. There was lacking the unity, the dramatic inevitability one senses in the tautly drawn, integrated performance of great drama. "Aida" will always be capable, if restudied in the light of its greatness, of thrilling an audience as one of the truly grand operas.

A note of freshness was brought to the production in the first Boston appearance of the Romanian soprano, Stella Roman, in the title role. She was very well received and was given a hearty round of applause, especially for her singing of the Nile scene aria. Though Miss Roman is obviously stepped in the traditions of her role, she interprets it with a good deal of vocal and histrionic passion. Miss Roman's voice seems of somewhat unstable tone quality, varying between a rather wide tremolo and sudden pianissimi. But she has a confident stage presence, giving one the impression that she is right for her role.

In the [first] scene Mr. Martinelli sang "Celeste Aida" with clarity. Though the tones are pinched and the voice thin, there is still recognizable a faded element of greatness. Mr. Martinelli is an operatic figure of long experience, of sincerity and force. He reaches moments of significance upon the stage, but dignity is his main counterpart.

Bruna Castagna sang Amneris last evening with her customary forcefulness and artistry. Especially fine was the famous aria in the beginning of the last act. John Gurney brought noble bearing and fine vocal equipment to the role of the King. He, with Norman Cordon as Ramfis, and Leonard Warren as Amonasro, contributed some of the finest singing of the evening.

The scenery alone, as repainted for this production by Joseph Novak, is dramatic. And Mr. Defrere's staging is remarkable considering the number of people he must have on the stage during the larger scenes. The ballet varies in interest from a genuine contribution to the general effect, to simple oddity.



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