Last year, when the mezzo-soprano Judit Kutasi made her Met debut as Preziosilla, I wrote that her singing was “wobbly and tuneless.” In Aida, she extended those qualities to the dream role of Amneris. There is no core or firmness in her voice except at the very top, where the timbre is harsh but the tone is at least steadied, and the pitch secured, by the tensions associated with the altitude. She was taken to task locally for her lurchings about in the Judgement Scene, and it’s true that some of her melodramatic miming was unconvincing. But I appreciated that she at least understood that if one is to undertake any of these roles, one must somehow command the stage and attempt to convey the emotional extremity of her or his dramatic predicament. There is a stage talent here, I think, but the voice is a functional mess. Quinn Kelsey, the Met’s leading “Italian” baritone of recent seasons, simply took a bye on the juicy part of Amonasro, walking through it unconcernedly. Perhaps he was inhibited by an awareness of the embarrassing spectacle presented by the interracial father/daughter combo (of which neither partner resembled an Ethiopian),(I) and/or his position as a figure in the museum diorama. But he seemed to be backing off vocally, as well. Of his Renato last season (see Ballo Sneaks Back In, 11/23/24), I noted that while his voice remained the closest of that cast to filling out his role, his singing was increasingly inclined to straight-toned solutions of vexatious passages, and to an overly open approach to notes (specifically, E and F) in the passaggio, making entrance into the high range problematic. An expectable response to that is an attempt to lighten the pressure on those pitches, but that does nothing to alleviate the registral imbalance, and tends to make the whole instrument’s engagement shallower and more tentative. That is not a promising direction for this fine voice, particularly at a time when heavier, slightly lower parts are being essayed. (Kelsey’s other role this season has been Scarpia.)
Footnotes
| ↑I | We know far less about the ancient Ethiopians than we do of the Egyptians. Far less seems to have remained, and far less archeological work has been done, so while we have plenty of images of Pharaonic royalty and commoners to give us guidance on matters of physiognomy, costume, etc., there is not much when it comes to the Ethiopians. But they were of the Semitic ethnic and linguistic group, and oriented more toward the East and North than toward Western Africa. It is intriguing to look at the costume renderings (full face and figure) of the great Egyptologist August Mariette for the first production. It was Mariette, after all, who at the Khedive’s request wrote out the Aida plot from which Camille de Locle created the scenario that Antonio Ghislanzoni, with plenty of intervention from Verdi, then versified, and no one knew more of the subject than he. Verdi’s own annotations for the Italian premiere may not have been far off when he specified “olive skin, dusky reddish complexion” for Amonasro, Aida, and, presumably, the Ethiopian prisoners. Meanings ascribed to the original appellation “Ethiopian,” which was Greek, include (among others—references are at variance) “burnt face” and “red-brown”. |
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