A Direct, Practical Approach to ‘Aida’

Teatro Lirico d’Europa, the touring company that made its West Coast debut at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday night with Verdi’s “Aida,” is a Paris-based opera troupe with smaller than world-class resources or pretensions, a decent company with good, not international, singers, respectable sets and unglamorous costuming; ultimately provincial but pleasing.

Teatro Lirico puts on a good show, as witness this “Aida” (repeated Thursday), one of two operas--the other one is Puccini’s “Turandot”--the company is bringing to this country this season. And Verdi’s masterpiece score is treated with respect, beginning with conductor Joseph Illick and a 60-member orchestra in the Cerritos pit. There may be no elephants or horses, and only one lone Ethiopian, in the Triumphal Scene, yet the music exerts its considerable charms.

The well-lighted, simple, statues-and-rock setting--except for hanging murals, it changes little in four acts--creates a modest theatrical illusion for the singers and holds the action sensibly. The staging by company artistic director Giorgio Lalov is direct and practical.

The singers in this production, like Lalov, are Bulgarian; they perform solidly. Except for Roumen Doikov, the Radames, who possesses a thrilling and consistent tenor voice of healthy, Italianate ring, they are unexceptional but strong.

The Aida of Ofelia Hristova warmed slowly to the Verdian challenges; by the time of the Nile Scene, she rose to them with dramatic color, technical ease and beautiful high notes. Then she sailed forth heroically into the final scene.

Of similar quality, mezzo Stefka Mineva, as Amneris, reversed the equation, singing more effectively in the first two acts, then tiring somewhat from the Judgment Scene onward. Mark Gargiulo’s imposing Amonasro usually made handsome sounds and musical sense; what he lacked in interpretive authority could be said for most of the singing on Wednesday: He needs big-league operatic coaching.

Mikhail Krutikov’s ungainly Ramfis proved both burly and woolly, as well as overproduced vocally. Thoroughly promising was Emil Ponorski, as a sonorous King.