Lyric Opera 2023-2024 Issue 7 - Aida

27 | Lyric Opera of Chicago prior invasions and insults. In the tremendous choral scene that begins with the King’s “ Su! del Nilo al sacro lido accorrete, Egyzii eroi ” (“Up! Run to the sacred banks of the Nile, Egyptian heroes”)—far more stirring musically, in my view, than the static triumph scene—we see a people galvanized to retributive violence by the thought of both past and present wrongs to their own country. Even the gods are later described as “avengers” (“ vindice ”) of the wrongs done to Egypt by the enemy. The people are in pain, and their cry is “ Guerra! Guerra! Guerra guerra guerra! ” (“War!”) and death to the foreigner (“ e morte allo stranier ”). So it goes, on and on. If there is any moral high ground here, it belongs to the somewhat naive Egyptians, who, after their triumph, free all the Ethiopian prisoners, believing Amonasro’s lie that their king has been slain. Only Amonasro (known only as Aida’s father, not as that same king) is kept behind as a hostage, and, as we shortly see, he is free enough to organize his troops and plan a second campaign. Nor is there any hint of anything like the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries. The enslaved are prisoners of war. Aida must have been captured in a prior invasion, long enough ago that they have forgotten that she is the king’s daughter; and the Ethiopian captives would no doubt have been selectively enslaved too, had Radamès’s plea for mercy not led to their release. The two nations have a visceral hatred of one another: the Egyptians call the Ethiopians “ barbari ,” and Amonasro calls Egyptians a “hated race (“ razza ”), deadly to us.” So far as we can tell, this hatred is based on past ill treatment, not on physiognomy or color. Retributive and more or less unending war, then, is Verdi’s theme, not asymmetrical colonial domination. This war scenario is timeless—great powers have behaved this way for millennia, and they were behaving this way still in Verdi’s time, as he saw, and keenly felt. Verdi’s letters show deep grief and fear about the 1870 war and the future of Europe. Within this scenario of perpetual back-and-forth war, two themes are of primary interest to Verdi. First is the pain inflicted on captive people by separation from their own country—a theme dear to Verdi’s heart always, as in the famous chorus of the Jews in Nabucco , “Va pensiero” (“Go thoughts”), one of his most memorable creations, and in the similar lament, “ Patria oppressa ,” sung by the Scottish refugees in Macbeth . Here in Aida , however, he gives the longing for a lost fatherland not a choral but a deeply personal form—Aida’s hauntingly beautiful aria “ O patria mia ” (O my fatherland), as, in solitude, her voice in dialogue with a delicate oboe solo, she conjures in her mind the image of her beautiful lost land. The second theme, which one might call Aida’s master theme, since it structures the destinies of all the main characters, is that of the tragic conflict of loyalties that war so often causes, if one happens to care about a person or people on the other side. Greek tragedy, as Verdi would have known well, dwells obsessively on these conflicts of “right with right,” in which there is no course of action that is not fraught with horror and betrayal. And Aida is, at its heart, a Greek tragedy. Aida and Radamès both face painful conflicts between love and national loyalty, and on both sides of these conflicts loom terrible wrongdoing. Amneris’s conflict is less obvious, but by the final act her genuine love for Radamès pits her against the Priests, harsh arbiters of his fate, leading her into a kind of betrayal of her national cause, since Radamès really is a traitor, albeit an accidental one. These conflicts pervade and shape the entire opera, and Verdi, writing with unparalleled daring, gives them unforgettable musical shape. Aida’s long first-act aria “Ritorna vincitor” (“Return a victor”) searingly depicts the pain of realizing, suddenly, that your heart and mind are torn in two and that you are forced to betray someone you love whatever you do or say. Aida hears the wish for Radamès’s victory pass her lips—almost against her intentions—and then says, “the impious words came out of my mouth.” Realizing that she is wishing for the defeat of her father and her brothers, she then asks the gods to take away her horrible words and bring about the destruction of the enemies of her people. And hearing herself say that, she recoils again: “Unhappy woman, what did I just say?” Recalling the beauty of her love, she realizes that she cannot wish death upon the man she loves so deeply. As a sense of moral panic grips her tight, the music, more and more hysterical, expresses her terrible torment: “The sacred names ‘father,’ ‘lover,’ I cannot mention or recall. Confused, trembling, for the one, for the other, I would weep, I would pray. But my prayers turn to curses, weeping is a crime, and sighs are guilty…” This is what war does to people who love. And this is the real theme of Aida . For the hideous predicaments created for decent people by this cycle of retributive wars there is but one remedy, and it is named by Amneris at the opera’s end, as she addresses the god Isis: “Peace, I implore you, peace, peace, peace.” Great nations have yet to find this solution. Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. Her The Tenderness of Silent Minds: Britten and his War Requiem will appear from Oxford next fall.