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Zeffirelli’s Aida Between Monumentality and Intimacy Parma
Busseto (Teatro Verdi)
10/02/2026 - & October 9, 16*, 25, 2026
Giuseppe Verdi: Aida
Federica Vitali (Aida), Teresa Iervolino (Amneris), Vincenzo Costanzo (Radamès), Hae Kang (Amonasro), Alberto Comes (Ramfis), Adriano Gramigni (Il Re), Nicoletta Briguglio (Sacerdotessa), Francesco Congiu (Un messagero)
Coro del Teatro Regio di Parma, Martino Faggiani (Chorus Master), Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, Giuseppe Mengoli (Conductor)
Franco Zeffirelli (Stage Director & Set Designer), Stefania Trespidi (reprisal stage director), Anna Anni (Costumes), Andrea Borelli (lighting), Luc Bouy (Choreography)
(© Roberto Ricci)
There are few experiences more evocative for an opera lover than hearing Verdi in Busseto, the town in which the composer was born. The Festival Verdi had wisely expanded its geographical horizons beyond Parma’s Teatro Regio, extending its programme into the surrounding towns and thereby restoring a measure of territorial breadth to an undertaking that might otherwise have remained confined to the provincial capital. Having previously attended a performance of Il trovatore in the little‑used theatre of Fidenza, I was pleased to find this policy continued with Aida at Busseto’s Teatro Verdi, a house of approximately 300 seats bearing the name of the town’s most celebrated son.
The choice was, on the face of it, almost perverse. Aida, that quintessential synthesis of intimate psychological drama and monumental public spectacle, seemed an improbable candidate for a theatre whose modest dimensions were antithetical to the conventions of Grand Opéra. I had seen Franco Zeffirelli’s imposing productions at La Scala and the Arena di Verona, and wondered how a staging conceived for Busseto could possibly accommodate the score’s demands without reducing it to a theatrical curiosity. The answer proved considerably more interesting than I had anticipated. Paradoxically, I found much to admire in this miniature incarnation that had been less apparent in its grander counterparts.
The difficulty with Aida has never been a lack of spectacular possibilities. On the contrary, its pageantry is so seductive that it can obscure the very drama it was intended to illuminate. The triumphal procession, the monumental settings and the massed forces of the conventional production may overwhelm the fragile emotional equilibrium among the four principal characters. In Busseto, the limitations of the stage imposed a salutary discipline. Deprived of much of the customary visual excess, the opera’s human conflicts acquired greater definition. The triangular entanglement of Aida, Radamès and Amneris, complicated by Amonasro’s demands and the larger machinery of state, emerged with unusual immediacy.
The price of this intimacy was nevertheless tangible. The dances accompanying the second act triumphal scene were omitted, and the Triumphal March was deprived of the conventional mass spectacle that has made it one of opera’s most recognisable public rituals. Zeffirelli’s solution was ingenious: rather than presenting the procession exclusively as an object of display, he foregrounded the crowd’s excitement as it watched the parade. The spectacle was thus mediated through the response of those witnessing it. This inversion did not entirely compensate for the loss of the scene’s full ceremonial magnificence, but it offered a revealing alternative to the familiar accumulation of visual effects.
The production’s relative intimacy also placed considerable responsibility on its performers. With the exception of Teresa Iervolino, whose work I have recently encountered in Donizetti’s Enrico di Borgogna in Venice and earlier in Barcelona’s production of Madama Butterfly, the youthful cast was largely new to me. Its collective vocal standard proved a most agreeable surprise.
Federica Vitali approached Aida with a lyric soprano whose principal attractions lay in the refinement of her pianissimi and the persuasiveness of her stage presence. The role has traditionally favoured a spinto or even a dramatic soprano, capable of surmounting Verdi’s more strenuous climaxes without sacrificing tonal amplitude. Vitali did not possess that particular vocal profile. Yet Busseto’s dimensions made her choice more defensible than it might have been in a larger theatre, where the voice would have been required to compete with more imposing orchestral and scenic forces. Her acting was generally convincing, although the interpretation became problematic in Act III. Here Aida appeared less a woman tormented by the irreconcilable claims of country, father and lover than an experienced seductress manipulating Radamès. Whether this conception originated with the singer or with the revival direction, it weakened the moral and emotional complexity of the encounter.
Iervolino, by contrast, offered the evening’s most compelling performance. Until recently, Italian mezzo has been principally associated with the lighter and more ornamentally demanding repertories of Rossini and Handel. Her transition to the heavier Verdi mezzo‑soprano repertoire was therefore particularly striking. As Amneris, she combined vocal substance with a penetrating understanding of the character’s dramatic trajectory. The princess’s pride, jealousy and wounded authority were never merely external attributes; they gradually disclosed the vulnerability of a woman whose political power could not secure the love she desired. Her scene in Act IV, set against the grim judicial proceedings in which the priests condemned Radames as a traitor, brought the audience to an eruption of applause. It was the evening’s most deserved ovation.
Vincenzo Costanzo, despite a secure command of the notes and an impressive squillo, was the least convincing of the principal singers. This was less an indictment of his abilities than a tribute to the high level attained by his colleagues. His Radamès lacked the elegance of phrasing and the subtlety of nuance that might have lent greater distinction to the Egyptian commander. The modest dimensions of the theatre had the advantage of discouraging vocal forcing, but his stage presence remained somewhat wooden. He was most effective when he abandoned emphatic gestures, as in the final tomb scene.
The most remarkable discovery was Hae Kang as Amonasro. The South Korean baritone delivered an interpretation of unusual authority, possessing the virile timbre and commanding presence associated with the finest Verdi baritones. His greatest strength, however, was his phrasing, which gave the Ethiopian king’s political determination and paternal desperation a compelling expressive coherence. I have heard distinguished singers in this role, yet Kang’s performance ranked among the most convincing. His Italian diction was also the clearest in the cast, an achievement all the more noteworthy given that the other leading roles were sung by native Italian speakers.
Giuseppe Mengoli’s conducting offered a further argument for the production’s success. He displayed an attentive understanding of the orchestral palette of a score whose richness extends far beyond its monumental climaxes. The opening of Act III was especially distinguished: its delicate, almost impressionistic atmosphere revealed a conductor sensitive to the suggestive power of orchestral colour and to the suspended stillness that precedes Aida’s encounter with Radamès. The theatre’s intimate acoustics, however, were not an unmixed blessing. They exposed individual orchestral and choral details with a clarity that occasionally came at the expense of homogeneous ensemble sound. The Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini nevertheless demonstrated its characteristic flexibility and expressive range, while the chorus of the Teatro Regio di Parma, prepared by Martino Faggiani, acquitted itself admirably.
The audience’s enthusiastic reception was an appropriate conclusion to a performance that had exceeded expectations. Zeffirelli’s Busseto Aida did not reproduce the monumental experience offered by his productions for La Scala or Verona’s Arena. Nor could it do so. Its achievement lay elsewhere: in demonstrating that the reduction of theatrical scale need not entail a corresponding reduction of dramatic stature.
The experiment also raised a question central to the interpretation of Verdi. At what point did spectacle cease to serve the drama and begin to compete with it? Busseto offered a persuasive, if necessarily incomplete, answer. By surrendering some of the visual and musical resources conventionally associated with Aida, the production brought the characters’ private agonies into sharper relief. The resulting intimacy did not supplant the grandeur of Verdi’s conception, but it illuminated a dimension that grandiosity could sometimes conceal. In the composer’s native town, the most effective tribute to his genius was thus not the imitation of monumental scale, but the rediscovery of the human drama within it.
Ossama el Naggar
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