Copenhagen.(Aida)(Opera Review)

The Royal Theater's Kasper Bech Holten, wunderkind of Danish opera and an artistic director of whom the unexpected is expected, opted to open Operaen, the brand-new opera house tinder his theater's charge, with Aida. The choice of a trusted old Italian warhorse to inaugurate the city's first new opera venue in 130 years was a controversial one, but any edge of modernity the performance might have offered was dulled by veteran director Mikael Melbye, whose unambitious Aida showed an almost willful lack of interpretive insight.

Star tenor Roberto Alagna, making his role debut as Radames, lent Melbye's Aida (seen January 29) international-caliber glamour. Alagna sang only two performances, as scheduled, and then departed; for me, the production holds little interest without him. Alagna was what made this Aida come to life, if only briefly. When he was onstage, the audience was all ears; when he was offstage, all semblance of life was sucked out of the opera. Alagna's voice had a burnished, almost baritonal timbre, its smoldering beauty evident throughout its compass, even at the very top of the range. His stamina is particularly impressive from an artist who is essentially a lyric, rather than a ...