Picture this: the Pharoah's daughter, Amneris (Liza Kadelnik/Zarui Vardanean), fancies Radames (Giorgio Meladze/Vitalii Liskovetskiy) - a dashing wannabe leader with great legs. He is having a secret relationship with Aida (Olga Perrier/Alyona Kistenyova), the Pharoah's daughter's Ethiopian slave. Egypt declares war on Ethiopia, battle is led by Radames. Aida's loyalty is torn. Aida's people get captured, including her dad (Iurie Gisca). The Pharoah (Oleksandr Forkushak) allows Aida's dad to stay alive, but says Radames has to marry his Amneris. Aida's dad tells Aida that for her country she needs to kill Radames, overpower Egypt and become Queen. Tragedy ensues. Essentially it's a classic Romeo and Juliet story with a bit of war and some terrifying ancient punishment to top it off.

This dramatic tragedy is performed by Opera & Ballet International and directed by Ellen Kent. The many threads making up the story weave themselves into a complex tangle towards the end of the first act, coming to a dramatic climax in the second. Radames' triumphant entry with the Ethiopian prisoners is of particular note, a crescendo of pleas and threats rising in dramatic harmony. Aida's solo scenes are particularly moving. Against a high stone wall, with one small square of light falling as if from a high window. This unreachable light source she moves in and out of seem a visual metaphor for the impossibility of her situation. The sets had been very cleverly designed, the sense of perspective that good stage sets achieve never fail to amaze me. But it is what happens off stage and in the minds of the audience that I find to be as important as what is seen. An example of this is the trial of Radames in the third act, heard by the audience but whose only visual way into it is through the look of horror on the face of Amneris at the knowledge of what she has sent her beloved into.

At Aida's world premiere in Cairo in 1871, twelve elephants graced the stage. In Shanghai over a hundred years later, the menagerie had grown, to include not just elephants but camels, tigers, boars, lions and parrots. It is this grandiose, over-luxuriated visualisation of the Verdi opera that I felt to be lacking in Ellen Kent's version. I wanted more from the fire performer; I wanted not just poi but fire staff, fire breathing, I wanted jugglers with flaming clubs and acrobatic acts on hot coals. To give Kent credit, there were scenes that gave its audience this. Also there was a horse. A really skittish horse. And a ballet dancer on pointe. And some very small children not quite correctly performing their dance routine. Eternally cute as small children messing up dance routines are, this added to the, dare I say it, almost amdram feeling about the whole thing. I don't want to devalue the musical talent of the performers, or the orchestra (conducted by Nicolae Dohotaru and Vasyl Vaslyenko), or the huge amount of work that must go into something like this, but why did the wigs have to look so synthetic, and why did the costumes of the Egyptian men remind me of something someone's mum made out of a bed sheet for the nativity play?

If I were to award a star rating to this opera, which today I will, I'd give it 3 out of 5, for being thoroughly average. Actually, scrap that, I'd award it a million stars, add some glitter in for good measure. Because that's what this opera needed, it needed MORE.