REVIEW (Excerpt) Kansas City Star, Monday, September 16, 2007

Lyric’s ‘Aida’ makes for a night to remember

AIDA at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City

The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s “Aida” is not just a superb operatic production, it’s theater on a level you seldom see on any Kansas City stage, musical or otherwise.

On Saturday at the Lyric Theatre the oddball version that New York-based director Thaddeus Strassberger designed and directed kicked off the Lyric’s 50th-anniversary celebration, and it augured well for the artistic future of this ever-improving company.

It featured capital soloists, a cast of nearly 150, an orchestra in fine form and commanding, richly inflected musical direction from Ward Holmquist. It also included a gory human sacrifice and the first-ever glimpse of female breasts in the Lyric’s chaste half-century.

In keeping with the Egyptian theme, opening night also included live camels outside the theater and a post-opera reception with live African drumming.

Strassberger’s conceptually spare, visually fascinating set design began with four squared prosceniums framing an upstage drop painted with pale sand dunes, and a sheer scrim downstage allowing for dreamlike scene-openings. Amneris’ apartment included a rectangular bath that in the Nile scene lengthened to become the river itself.

In Act 3 a huge astrological dial rose like a giant moon. Instead of a tomb in Act 4 we got a massive stone monolith descending perilously close to Amneris’ head... Aaron Black’s brilliant lighting was essential to the look of the show, with potent details like the rippling Nile water casting giant reflections onto the walls.

-- Paul Horsley