On Octo­ber 24^th, about 15 of us attended the high def­i­n­i­tion TV pre­sen­ta­tion of Puccini’s Aida at the War­wick Show­case Cinema.

Tele­cast live via satel­lite from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera House in New York, if you can’t be there in per­son, this is def­i­nitely the way to go. The cam­eras scanned us through the new opera house, into the orches­tra pit and behind the scenes as stag­ing was tak­ing place. There were live chats with mem­bers of the cast (both just before and just after per­form­ing), we met the cos­tume designer and artis­tic direc­tor … it was totally fascinating.

No need to tell you that the per­for­mance itself was out­stand­ing, with glo­ri­ous music and voices, incred­i­ble cos­tumes and mag­nif­i­cent scenic design. An Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the libretto was sub­tly inserted at the bot­tom of the screen, so that it didn’t dis­tract but cer­tainly assisted. I have to admit that my roman­tic soul had a bit of a prob­lem with the size of Aida, and more so of Radames and Amneris. I guess big voices require big bod­ies, but…

Any­way, it was an A-​​Plus day and highly rec­om­mended. There are six more per­for­mances for the 2009–2010 sea­son (you can see the sched­ule on the Met’s own web­site by click­ing here), and we’ll cer­tainly do another group trip next year. Watch for details.