Opera audiences are usually disappointed to see an administrator stride onstage before a performance to announce a last-minute cast change, but every so often the audience gets a lot more than they expected. A case in point is soprano Latonia Moore, who will sing the title role of Verdi’s Aida at Ravinia on August 3. In March 2012 the same role was the vehicle of her stunningly triumphant Metropolitan Opera debut when she stepped in to replace the ailing Violeta Urmana, an event shared and celebrated by many thousands of operaphiles who heard the performance on a live radio broadcast.
Moore’s “star is born” experience puts her in exalted company, indeed. Back in 1957, another young American soprano made an unexpected debut in the same role after Antonietta Stella became indisposed at San Francisco Opera, where Leontyne Price had just made her company debut as Madame Lidoine in the American premiere production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites. It was her first opportunity to perform the title role of Aida, but hardly the last; Price came to virtually own the role, reigning as the pre-eminent Aida until her retirement from the opera stage in 1985.
