Aida

One of the greatest ironies of the French grand opéra - the absolute spectacle of early Romanticism - is that its legacy has come down to us, on the whole, via foreign alternatives such as Aida, whose premiere in  Cairo in 1871 was surrounded by all the paraphernalia of grand geopolitical conclaves. Far from giving in to the mundane plot, a characteristic of the genre, this master piece and defining moment for Verdi, converted all the crowd scenes into an integral part of the drama - and not just an extravaganza - and instilled its characters with a fire that reaches solar temperatures in the last act before melting in a loving embrace of resignation and oblivion.

Any production that attempts to reach the stature of this work must get around challenges which are no less thorny: that the drama shines over and above the spectacle, and that the passions release their red-hot glow without being consumed in the macabre flames of melodrama. Nearly a quarter of a century after its premiere in 1998, these are precisely the reasons that validate this historic production by Hugo de   Ana in an updated  revival that demonstrates once again -  at the risk of sounding redundant - its perennial actuality.