Word: zeffirelli
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Originally, the Met entrusted Aida's direction and design to Franco Zeffirelli, who recreated the city of Paris in the 1981 La Boheme and put the Forbidden City on the stage with his 1987 Turandot. When Zeffirelli's designs turned out to be too big and expensive, Gianni Quaranta, Zeffirelli's set decorator on several films, was engaged instead. Quaranta has conjured up a storybook Nile replete with towering statues, colorful friezes and a couple of skittish horses to pull Radames' chariot during the Triumphal March. Employing the two-tiered hydraulic stage lift a la Franco, Quaranta triggered the evening...
...most of the voices raised against the film belong to people who have not yet seen it. Italian Director Franco Zeffirelli called the movie "damaging to the image of Christ. He cannot be made the object of low fantasies." Fundamentalist Leader Jerry Falwell called for a boycott against MCA, Universal's parent company; all MCA products, which include Grosset & Dunlap publishers, Spencer Gifts and Motown Records; and any theater that shows the film. Said Falwell: "Neither the label 'fiction' nor the First Amendment gives Universal the right to libel, slander and ridicule the most central figure in world history...
Move over, Zeffirelli. For a $10 million staging of Verdi's Aida this month, Egyptian-born Impresario Fawzi Mitwali rejected sets for the real thing: the Temple of Luxor on the site of ancient Thebes. Besides Tenor Placido Domingo, opening night featured the 525-member Arena di Verona Opera Company, 180 Egyptian soldiers and 200 extras tramping down the Avenue of the Sphinxes...
Tickets for Turandot being harder to come by than those for Les Miserables, most fans must wait for the TV broadcast next season. As for Zeffirelli, he tackles Aida in 1988-89. An anxious opera world awaits the reconstruction of the pyramids...
...Metropolitan Opera, Director Franco Zeffirelli stages a Turandot that is a monument to glorious -- or is it wretched? -- excess...