10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Aida' Review: Angel Blue's Sensational Soprano on PBS
It might dawn on a viewer during 'Aida' that we live in a great country, where you can avail yourself of three hours of Verdi from the Metropolitan Opera on a Friday night for the unprincely sum of $1.60 (what each American pays, approximately, for a year of public broadcasting). And, if you happen to have other plans, make use of your god-given DVR option to watch it later. Do one or the other: There are flaws in the production, but it is a spectacle, an emotional and compositional expedition, with a couple of extra-musical dramas afoot as well.
The first of these is the appearance of the sensational Angel Blue in her first New York 'Aida,' a role that was virtually owned by another black American soprano, Leontyne Price, during her career at the Met. If opera weren't like hockey, race would be irrelevant. But there's no avoiding the sense of daring involved in a relatively young star such as Ms. Blue taking on a role so identified with a goddess like Price. As viewers will see, and hear, Ms. Blue makes her own mark on a notoriously difficult part, negotiating its most treacherous passages effortlessly and with enormous warmth. She may possess less vocal grandeur than Price, but grandeur may not be what a listener wants from the enslaved Ethiopian princess of Verdi's epic, a tale in which frustrated love and total war lead to the kind of happy ending familiar to fans of grand opera. (I'm kidding.)
