[Met Performance] CID:298030



Aida
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, September 28, 1989




Aida (939)
Giuseppe Verdi | Antonio Ghislanzoni
Aida
Aprile Millo

Radamès
Plácido Domingo

Amneris
Dolora Zajick

Amonasro
Sherrill Milnes

Ramfis
Stephen Dupont

King
Dimitri Kavrakos

Messenger
Mark Baker

Priestess
Margaret Jane Wray

Dance
Joseph Fritz

Dance
Linda Gelinas

Dance
Kimberly Graves


Conductor
James Levine







Review 1:

Review and account of Wilborn Hampton in his internet blog

Some unexpected excitement flared in the fourth act of "Aida" at the Metropolitan Opera House Thursday night, when one of the enormous braziers perched on tripods on either side of the stage flamed up like an outdoor grill with too much charcoal lighter fluid.

Backstage technicians turned off the gas that fuels the two braziers, but the fire that began as a small finger of flame spread along the side of the bowl of one of them.

Dolora Zajick, the Amneris for the evening, kept singing, although she glanced nervously upstage to the flaming prop. At one point, James Levine, who was conducting, ducked into the pit and made a hurried telephone call. Out-of-Costume Extra

Finally, the chorus of priests marched back out on stage. Lurking behind the priests, who spread out across the stage in case they needed to form a bucket brigade, was a man seriously out of costume, crouching behind the chorus and trying to look inconspicuous carrying a fire extinguisher. As the chorus tried to cover him from view, the fireman fought the blaze.

True to the traditions of show business, the Met fireman kept his bursts with the extinguisher short, apparently trying to time them to coincide with the forte passages the chorus was singing and end them when Miss Zajick sang alone.

There was no mistaking the loud whoosh of foam from the fire extinguisher as part of the orchestration, however, and the audience that had been somewhat alarmed at the outbreak of the fire found it hard to contain its amusement at its quenching.

Throughout it all, no one on stage or in the pit missed a beat.



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