Jamie Hayes, director of Opera Northern Ireland's new Aida, knew he was on to something very different. He must have suspected that audiences would find it implausible if not actually ridiculous he had transposed the opera from ancient Egypt to the 19th century - the time of the Franco-Prussian war - and his note in the programme reads like special pleading for a lost cause.
The effect of the shift was to make nonsense of the colour in Verdi's music, and to cramp a work epitomising the "grand" in grand opera. Hayes's production compressed it into a claustrophobic and not always coherent domesticity of scale.
The translucent sliding panels of Nick Barnes's set were clumsy in operation, the hoisted platform of the closing scene both awkward-looking and ineffectual.
Sadly, conductor Martin Andre took a view of the music that was stiff and managed to sell short on the most splendid moments.
The best singing came from the Radames of the Georgian tenor, Badri Maissouradze. He was by no means consistent and certainly seemed like no actor. But he could ring out with impressive force and often sang with a sure sense of style.
Jean Glennon's Aida showed a heavy, pitch-obscuring vibrato, and as Amneris, her mezzo soprano rival for Radames heart, Hyacinth Nicholls had a weak lower range.
The usually reliable Richard Robson failed to find his form as the high priest, Ramfis, and the most consistent singing and characterisation came from the Jonathan Veira as Aida's father, the defeated Ethiopian king, Amonasro. Opera Northern Ireland's chorus was its usual, vocally ragged self.
At the end of the evening, I heard a number of people commenting that the gyrations of the pantomime horse was the coup of the evening. That's how bad an Aida this was.
