Lyric Opera 2023-2024 Issue 7 - Aida

25 | Lyric Opera of Chicago portions are soliloquies. Even in the intimate scenes, much is communicated through asides, inner reflections of thought and emotion. The second misconception is that Aida is a drama of colonial oppression and enslavement, with the Ethiopian Aida standing for the long colonial subjugation of Black Africans. Modern casting often follows this idea, and the opera has given welcome and long overdue opportunities to some great Black singers. Actually, however, as we’ll see, the drama concerns not colonial domination but an ongoing and seemingly endless sequence of retributive wars between two powerful independent kingdoms. War is the culprit, the destroyer of love. War was also the opera’s immediate context. No sooner had the Austro-Prussian War ended in 1866 (well for Italy, which achieved unification and nationhood), than it was followed by the Franco-Prussian War, July 1870-January 1871. This war included a siege of Paris, whose destruction Verdi greatly feared, and resulted in the unification of Germany, which filled him with alarm. Moreover, because the Germans took over Alsace and Lorraine, the seeds of future conflict were sown; that war is now seen as a direct precursor of World War I. Let us follow the history of the opera’s composition at this ominous time. In the mid-19th century, Egypt was a relatively autonomous kingdom within the Ottoman Empire, under the governance of a Viceroy, or Khedive, who at this time was Isma’il Pasha. For the opening of the Suez Canal in November 1869, the Khedive, through an emissary, implored Verdi to write something; Verdi declined, and the task was undertaken by Temistocle Solera, an old collaborator of Verdi’s and author of the libretti for five early Verdi operas, including Nabucco (1841) (whose plot is remarkably similar to that of Aida , with a similar romantic triangle). He and Verdi were no longer on speaking terms, because Solera had left town with the libretto of Attila (1846) still unfinished. By 1869, Solera had become a minor functionary of the Italian government. The Khedive offered him a post in Egypt, putting him in charge of the Suez ceremonies. (By 1871 he was back in Italy, running an antique shop in Florence.) By early 1870, Verdi’s position had softened, and he let it be known that he might write something for the opening of the Khedival Opera House if a suitable historical plot on an Egyptian theme could be found. Soon thereafter, a scenario for such an opera appeared, and was sent to Verdi by the Khedive through the impresario Camille Du Locle, with whom Verdi often worked. Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist residing in Cairo, was apparently the author. Mariette clearly wanted credit for the piece, and authority to add further “local color.” But he coyly said several different things about its provenance: sometimes that he had created the entire thing, sometimes that he and the Khedive wrote it together, sometimes that “an important person” was the author. When Verdi read the scenario, he liked it very much, but he did not believe that a scholar was the author. It was too dramatically adept, and must be the work of “a very expert hand, one who knows the theater very well.” Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, a Verdi biographer, argues that the author was probably Solera, at that time an important person in the Khedival art-world, but unable to work with Verdi under his own name because of their prior rupture. Whatever the solution to the enigma, Verdi was excited by the scenario, and began his own study of ancient Egyptian history, reading both Heliodorus of Emesa’s novel Aithiopika , the scenario’s source, and the Greek historian Herodotus’s account of ancient Egypt. He agreed to a contract to deliver the opera for presentation at the end of 1870. At this point, Mariette disappears from the scene. Verdi engaged Antonio Ghislanzoni, a librettist with whom he had recently worked on the revised version of La forza del destino . Many letters from Verdi to his librettist survive. They show him in charge of every line and phrase, insisting on fidelity to situation and fidelity to character. Again and again, he asks Ghislanzoni to dispense with poetic flourishes in favor of straightforward speech with dramatic meaning; the phrase la parola scenica (“dramatic speech”) appears repeatedly. Eventually the work was completed, but war had broken out, and Paris was under siege. The costumes and sets were stuck there, and the premiere had to be postponed. Rigoletto was performed instead on the planned date. After the war ended, Aida was performed to great acclaim on December 24, 1871—but not with the singers Verdi preferred, so he always counted the Milan premiere of February 8, 1872, at which the title role was played by his favorite soprano, Teresa Stolz, and Amneris was sung by Maria Waldmann, a mezzo whom Verdi much admired, as its real debut. But what is Aida about? Let’s now return to the issue of colonialism. Starting in the 17th century, colonial conquest by the great European powers subdued many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Americas, often for centuries. Sometimes there was a war of subjugation, usually against totally unequal forces. Sometimes, as in North America, the colonizers pretended the land was unsettled, and that they were developing a previously unowned space. Typically the colonized people possessed little or no political voice, even though most