Download Verdi was commissioned to compose Aida by the

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Aida
Verdi was commissioned to compose Aida by the ruler (Khedive) of Egypt, Isma’il Pasha for the
then enormous sum of 150,000 francs. The commission was not to celebrate the opening of
the Suez Canal but rather to mark the opening of a new opera hall in Cairo. The libretto was
written by Antonio Ghislanzoni based on a plot developed by Auguste Mariette, the foremost
Egyptologist of the era. He based the plot on his historical research of the Upper Nile valley.
The première was planned for January 1871. However it was delayed by the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War and finally took place in Cairo on December 24, 1871 where it was met
with enthusiastic acclaim. Aida’s European première took place at La Scala in Milan on
February 8, 1872. Given its success in Cairo and Milan, Aida productions were quickly mounted
throughout Italy in the following years. It was premièred in New York in 1873, in St. Petersburg
in 1875, and in both Paris and London in 1876.
Lang describes Aida as “the most successful nineteenth-century grand opera in the repertory,
and while it offers the ultimate in spectacular splendor it also offers unfailingly great music....
Aida is the combination of the most elaborate grand opera with bel canto and with a modern
orchestral technique, but all this on Verdi’s terms; thus Aida does constitute a new stage in the
composer’s development and also a new style.”7 Unlike Verdi’s earlier works and almost all
opera up to that time, except for that of Wagner, Aida is ‘through composed.’ There are no
more stops in the action for arias or choruses that do not advance the plot. Aida was:
The first among Verdi’s many to abandon the technique of the ‘great moments’ in
favour of an integrally composed work. The drama grows and flows inevitably; the
spectacular scenes are a logical part of the dramatic composition....The set pieces are
still there, but they are always motivated and blended into the evolving action.8
In Aida, Verdi broke with his past and the Italian past, though everything that had come before
helped prepare him for this new approach to Italian opera. Otello and Falstaff, which were to
follow, reinforced Verdi’s commitment to through composed works. Together with Aida they
established the path for opera to follow in the 20th century.
The world at the time of Aida’s première
7
Lang, pp 150, 151.
8
Lang, p. 151.
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The year 1871 was a year of great political change in Europe. In 1870, France had declared war
on Prussia, but was soundly defeated resulting in the loss of the provinces of Alsace and
Lorraine. The ‘Third Empire’ collapsed and was replaced by the Third Republic. Following the
success of his war against France, William I of Prussia, guided by his great chancellor, Otto von
Bismark, united the various German states into the German Empire. In Italy, the process of
Italian unification, that was so close to Verdi’s heart, culminated with the surrender of Rome by
the Papacy and the establishment of the political capital of the Kingdom of Italy in the historic
capital of Rome.
In the arts, in addition to Aida, 1871 witnessed the publication of Lewis Carrol’s Alice through
the Looking Glass and George Eliot’s Middlemarch. In music, Anton Bruckner gave a series of
concerts on the organ in the newly opened Royal Albert Hall in London, Tchaikovsky published
his String Quartet No. 1 in D, Opus 11 and Gilbert and Sullivan collaborated on their first joint
production, Thespis.
Manitoba in 1871
With the purchase of Rupert’s Land by the new Dominion of Canada in 1869, Louis Riel
established a provisional government that led to Canada agreeing to create the new province of
Manitoba in 1870. The Canadian government, looking to create a new transcontinental nation,
negotiated the entry of British Columbia into Confederation in 1871 on the condition that a
Pacific Railway be constructed to join British Columbia with the rest of Canada. The CPR’s
decision to run its tracks through the city of Winnipeg, later in the decade, would ensure its
future. The small community of Fort Garry was incorporated as a city, named Winnipeg, in
1873.