This article is the third installment in a series of my conversations with Washington, D.C.-based opera scholar, Saul Lilienstein, about the Verdi operas scheduled for broadcast this season on WETA Classical’s Opera Matinee Saturday afternoon feature. We’re delighted to hear Mr. Lilienstein’s insights into opera, many of which he has shared throughout the Washington, D.C. community through his involvement with professional arts organizations, universities and The Smithsonian. This conversation includes references to comments Mr. Lilienstein previously presented in his lecture series for Washington National Opera.
Here, we discuss Verdi’s Aida, presented live by the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025 at 12:30 pm (ET) and broadcast live on WETA Classical’s Opera Matinee.
Linda Carducci: We last spoke about Verdi’s Rigoletto, and its richness of characters and complexity of music. Verdi did it again with his later-career Aida (1871). We’ll get into its interesting structure and characters, not to mention its abundance of melodies. but first let’s discuss how it came about and its connection to Egypt.
Saul Lilienstein: Verdi was, by now, an acclaimed as a great composer and his fame continued to spread. The Khedive of Egypt loved Verdi, so asked Verdi to compose music for the opening of the Suez Canal, the waterway that connected the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, in 1859. The Canal was a big deal – front page news. That commission never came to pass, but later, the Khedive asked Verdi to write something for the opera house in Cairo (although the opera house first opened with Verdi’s Rigoletto.) The idea of a grand opera in the French style interested Verdi, so he collaborated with librettist and poet Antonio Ghislanzoni in writing a story that takes place in Egypt, based on a scenario by Camille du Locle and French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Although he was respectful and kind to Ghislanzoni during the writing process, Verdi wrote a series of letters to him about how operas are constructed, how certain words should be accented on certain beats and how to work with the music meter. The letters themselves are a course in how to write an opera and a libretto! But at this point, the very industrious and respected Giuseppe Verdi had achieved that kind of confidence, a sense authority within himself and to others. The Australian soprano Nellie Melba, who sang in several Verdi operas in the late 19th century, said Verdi “appeared to me as a gnarled oak tree.” Aida was a spectacular success at its premiere in Cairo in 1871 and at later performances elsewhere in Europe. Mussolini admired it as a patriotic piece, although it became less interesting to audiences after the Second World War who were weary of warfare.
LC: French grand opera means nearly everything is on a grand scale – choruses, authentic costumes, sets, and ensembles. And in the case of Aida, maybe an elephant or horse on stage!
SL: French opera is important in understanding Aida. Verdi loved Paris and would have wanted Aida to premiere in Paris. Aida became the French grand opera in the style of French composer Giacomo Meyerbeer that Verdi envisioned. It has magnificent choruses, a lavish set, elaborate costumes, and dance segments that were often used in French opera. It’s as stunning visually as musically.
LC: Verdi’s style was continuing to develop when he wrote Aida, but you’ve noted that the structure of Aida is traditional.
SL: Aida is an old-fashioned opera; there’s a defined and traditional structure such as standard eight-measure phrases that you’d find in a Classical symphony from the 18th century, as regular and expected as folk music. And scenes are complete entities that move to the next scene. Sometimes it takes an extra bit of imagination and effort to achieve something great within the confines of a structure. And he achieves it in a non-Romantic-style opera, although it was composed during the 19th century Romantic era. There’s nothing wrong with that if you stuff it with something really valuable, which Verdi does in Aida -- within the traditional structure is fresh harmonic language, new shapes, expressive melody and unresolved chords, that show new sources of influence on his work. Aida’s aria, “O, Patria Mia” (O, my dear country), for example, has no resolved chords, giving it a sense of unresolved longing. There’s no direct Wagnerian sound in Aida, but Verdi was open to new concepts.
If you look at the chronological list of many composers’ works, you’ll see they often vary their styles from one piece to the next, maybe from bold to peaceful, inventive to traditional, heavy to light. Just look at the varying styles of each successive Beethoven symphony! Composers don’t always work in a linear progression like science, where each successive effort is an innovation from the previous work. Art doesn’t work like that.
So whether you consider it old-fashioned or traditional, or however you label it, there’s hardly a moment that doesn’t work perfectly in Aida. Verdi had just written Don Carlo, a magnificent mess due to its many revisions and different versions, sometimes trimmed to keep the story short enough for the audience to get the last train home that evening! But you can’t remove anything or change anything or switch the order of anything in Aida because everything becomes intrinsic, and in perfect sequence, to the underlying story (unlike ballets that were stuck into his operas in France!). You could say that Aida is “neater” than Don Carlo.
LC: It’s grand opera, but essentially a sensitive story of forbidden love and unrequited love.
SL: It’s an eternal tale – very similar to Mozart’s Idomeneo -- of love versus duty, forbidden love and two women who love the same man, all set against a political backdrop. There are three main characters: Aida, an Ethiopian princess held captive in Egypt, who is torn between patriotic duty and forbidden love for Radames, an Egyptian military leader, who dreams of a victorious military career but harbors a secret love for Aida, and Amneris, the daughter of the Egyptian Pharoh who secretly loves Radames.
It’s easy to think of Amneris as a villain because she wants Radames for herself and is jealous of his love for Aida, and yes, she does some despicable things like trick Aida into confessing her love for Radames. And her music is based on power. But I think Amneris really isn’t the villain here – instead, she’s one of the victims and, frankly, is the real heroine of Aida in the same way that Liu, rather than Turandot, is the real heroine of Puccini’s Turandot. Why? Because Amneris suffers for the unrequited love for Radamès. Her loyalty to him drives her to try to save him from being executed by the Egyptian authorities. And she suffers in the final moments as he watches Radames and Aida unite and die peacefully together in each other’s arms. The real enemy and villain of Aida is the Egyptian clergy, the power structure that stands in judgment of Radamès and is intolerant of his love for someone outside of their class, and then orders his death. Verdi had a lifelong distaste for religion and the state taking control over people. The clergy is represented here with descending lines and counterpoint that represent opposition and division.
LC: As in some other Verdi operas, Aida includes a relationship between a father and his daughter.
SL: Yes, but here, the relationship is fraught rather than affectionate. Aida is loyal to her father, Amonasro, an Ethiopian leader held captive with Aida in Egypt. She’s also loyal to her homeland. But Amonasro is brutal to her; he overpowers her and shames and disgraces her for loving the Egyptian Radamès. He uses power to force Aida to become a traitor to Radames and coerce him to reveal sensitive military information, which Amonasro intends to use against the rival Egyptian army. Amonasro works on Aida psychologically, first by comforting and consoling her before revealing his ulterior motive.
LC: There are some great melodies in Aida. Aida’s aria, “O patria mia,” is such poignant yearning for her Ethiopian homeland, and her final duet with Radamès as they are entombed together, “O terra addio” (Goodbye to Earth), is a beautiful and peaceful acceptance of their death together. And then there’s the “Grand Triumphal March”!
SL: Yes, the Grand Triumphal March is an example of Verdi’s talent for spinning out spectacular melodies one after another. And it repeats abruptly in a completely different key, without modulation! Unusual but very effective. And then there’s Radamès’s showpiece aria, “Celeste Aida” (Heavenly Aida), in which he secretly expresses his love for Aida – secretly, because he is forbidden as an Egyptian military leader to have a romantic relationship with an Ethiopian slave. It’s not as much as aria as a tender expression of love; Radamès’s lines are always moving upward and floating away. Verdi wanted the last note to be held and float away, as it becomes softer and softer. It’s a difficult tenor aria, so Verdi wrote two different versions to give the original tenor an alternative between the original and an easier version. There’s a parallel to that in the lovers’ final duet, “O terra addio” in the way that it ends with a, soft, ethereal ascent of music as they die peacefully together. The music is simply so beautiful.
In another example of Verdi’s innovations in Aida, he moved away from the traditional Italian style of ending an aria with a rousing, crowd-pleasing cabaletta that changed the scene. Verdi inherited that style and often wrote that way. But in Aida, he realized that a cabaletta could conclude but not necessarily change an aria. In fact, it can be an affirmation of what was just sung. So when Aida sings “Ritorna vincitor” (Return victorious), the aria’s ending rouses her to prayer, rather than a rousing call to action or a scene-changer. The musical invention is on the highest level.
LC: Aida was a smash but then Verdi appears to have disappeared. Was this an intentional retirement from opera?
SL: There was huge audience demand for the opera after Aida was premiered in Cairo. Just before opening in Milan six weeks later, tickets were in such demand that people were selling them on the stock exchange! No question that Verdi was at the height of fame and international acceptance of his work. So he didn’t retire completely because after Aida he composed the Requiem and made revisions to some earlier operas. But he retired from writing new opera for 16 years after Aida. After such success and grand achievement, he experienced a natural dip. It was the perfect time to retreat to his farm and find contentment in his farm work. And by then, audiences were interested in the opera innovations of Wagner and Massenet; Verdi was starting to be considered old school. But ultimately, it was not over for Verdi – more than a decade later, he was lured out of retirement to write his masterful Otello and complete his opera canon with Falstaff. A grand career.
Hear Verdi’s Aida on WETA Classical’s Opera Matinee, Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 12:30 pm (ET).
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