"AIDA" REIGNS, STRAVINSKY CONQUERS -- MUSIC WITHOUT WARS

By Donna Perlmutter

Grand opera. No, maybe let’s call it grandiloquent opera. You know, the kind that overwhelms the senses with sound -- thousands of  voices raised to the rafters, orchestral resplendence -- with vast stretches of stage space filling with pomp and ceremony peopled by army choruses, priests, captives, slaves, horses or even elephants accompanying them.

Well, we don’t see much of those anymore. Opera productions today, the province of directors with avant-garde ideas, hew to the kind that explore interior consciousness. Neither did Giuseppe Verdi compose those truly grand pieces  -- except for “Aïda,” back in 1871, which turned out to be the runaway best-seller, most popular item of the genre.

And no wonder.

Despite its hyper-extravagance you’ve gotta love it. Because the music is irresistible, glorious, because the voice luxuriates in it, because the composer knew how to lavish the larynx with arias that make it shine like gold and go the technical limit of its gifts. And no matter that its narrative runs the usual gamut of star-crossed lovers in kingdoms warring with each other, the totality is sure-fire delight, going all the way to heartbreak. Just let its performers be up to snuff.

Indeed they were -- in Francesca Zambella’s much-traveled production for LA Opera. No, we’re not talking Leontyne Price and Jon Vickers -- those of halcyon days gone by. But the current cast certainly carried it off, even kept us glued. And Verdi’s great sense of intimate drama, framed, here again, in grand scale, captured all of those interpersonal emotions -- passion, jealousy, patriotic zeal, sorrow -- his genius forging it all into artful stagecraft.

What to do is give yourself over to the thrill of heroic voices, en masse, as all that pageantry, those set pieces and processionals form onstage. Don’t despair of the genre’s collective antiquity. Enjoy it.  With James Conlon, leading the whole shebang - vibrant orchestra and singers -- there is boundless excitement of the senses.

Not that you could completely discount the standard, uninspired face-front ensembles or Renta’s backdrop of omnipresent hieroglyphics (Chinese/Hebrew?) that defy understanding.

But Michael Yeargan’s sets do manage to bring the ancient Egyptian realm somewhat nearer in time: a war room with fluorescent rectangles of ceiling lights that spill over planning tables where fatigue-garbed military specialists convene, and elsewhere women wearing sophisticated empire gowns of filmy chiffon, not Cleopatra-esque regalia.

As for the singers, almost everything you wanted vocally in an Aïda was there, thanks to Latonia Moore in the title role -- her voice, one of lyric allure and some spinto capabilities, became, in “O patria mia,” a thing of heartfelt anguish that soared gorgeously above Grant Gershon’s  also brilliant choruses.  But visually she was at a dramatic disadvantage given her short stature up against tall Melody Moore, an imperious rival princess, Amneris, who commanded the stage and sang with a lustrous, darker-toned mezzo.

As Radames, the military captain they both fought over, Russell Thomas boasted  a tenor of warmth and fervor, even clearing “Celeste Aida” which, as an added difficulty, comes head-on-early in Act I. But that key moment in the 3rd Act duet, as he expectantly strides toward his lover in the night-time garden for their private moment at last, doesn’t quite reflect the urgency of Verdi’s accelerating motif of a man in heat. The composer wasn’t shy.

Of course Morris Robinson embodied the ideal Ramfis, strutting like a team manager around his camp with his booming, cavernous basso. And George Gagnidze, who answers the call everywhere for his stalwart father figure Amonasro, more than accomplished the task.

The tasks in today’s music, though, would no longer be recognizable to all those 19th century audiences who could expect formats to be familiar. Now composers fly in all directions and most ensembles proudly commission the kinds of scores that follow few formulas, if any.

Take Pulitzer Prize-winning Ellen Reid, who heard the LA Chamber Orchestra at UCLA’s Royce Hall give the world premiere of “Floodplain,” her piece that might make you imagine an environment that is “lush but dangerous,” though really it’s suggestive of anything your mind associates to.

The point is: composers often want to supply a narrative, if a format is not at hand. Fine.  A programmatic title can become a handle. It has a function. Maybe for all involved.

At any rate, British conductor and Stefan Asbury, a quick-study who subbed on short notice for Jaime Martín, ably led the LACO through Reid’s 13-minute work. He brought out its distinct profile -- waves of exotic sounds, all suggesting a mystique, a tableau; then, as though someone in a lab has put groups of instruments through walloping trials, one zinger at a time, they each ended in sudden separations. Plenty of intrigue here. Lots to praise.

Nor did the familiar get ignored. Concertmaster Margaret Batjer and principal cello Andrew Shulman made gemütlich soul-mates in their loving account of Brahms’ Double Concerto, with somewhat attenuated accompaniment by Asbury and the band.

But for nearly every concert of standard fare, we’re hearing commissioned entries accompany them. The LA Phil, as a prime example, recently paired Stravinsky’s 20th century blockbuster, “Sacre du Printemps” (currently referred to by Americans in the usual English-translation only -- you know, “Rite of Spring”), with “El Rio de Luz” (ok in Spanish for Angelenos? everyone gets it?).

In all of his work’s six minutes (!) composer Alex Nante  managed to show off the orchestra the way a kid with a fantastic new toy might. Some orchestra. Some toy.

There were delicious strands of high winds entwined with each other, bounding through Disney Hall’s space as though written for it -- not to mention the heavier, plangent stuff drenched in tiers of sound, waves of sound.

But that was just the opener for Gustavo Dudamel, back on the podium after a winter break. He and the band went for Nante’s piece with great joy. There wasn’t a hemidemisemiquaver they didn’t let escape or delight in.

Afterwards that same marvelous invasion also took place in “Sacre.” And Dudamel’s account was distinctly his own. It had a textural oozing, it had sensual swagger, deeper sonic richness, wider breadth -- all of it thrilling. And what could be more revelatory than the comparison to his predecessor, Esa-Pekka  Salonen, who gave us that same perennial favorite, Stravinsky’s, but with a razor-sharp angularity and the many rhythmic ruptures that took our collective breath away.

Does it seem that the beauty of living is hearing live music like this? Methinks so.