Aida and Grand Opera by Kathryn Bumpass

Opera San Luis Obispo has announced Verdi's Aida as the choice for this year's fall production. Performances will take place on October 11 and 12.

Ask most opera fans for an example of grand opera, and I believe Aida will top the list of responses you get. With its crowds of soldiers, priests, captives of war and skilled dancers, most of them attired in exotic costumes, its triumphal march with herald trumpets, its tale of doomed love marked by dramatic confrontations and an achingly beautiful tomb scene, this work virtually defines the term "grand opera" as we commonly use it.

In fact, grand opera emerged in the late 1820s in Paris. It was the representative genre of opera at Paris's most prestigious theater, the Academie Royale de Musique, or simply the Opera. La muette di Portici of 1828 was the first big success in French grand opera and Rossini's masterpiece and final opera, Guillaume Tell (1829), was in the same vein.

Rossini and many other landmark Italian composers, such as Donizetti and Verdi, composed operas specifically for the Opera, and some of their Italian operas were translated and adapted for Paris.

Verdi's Don Carlos was written on commission from the Opera, and that was not the first of his operas to be performed in France. He had a strong connection with Paris throughout most of his career. He also drew on French novels and plays for stories in his Italian operas. It's also where he met the love of his life, Guiseppina Strepponi.

A taste for spectacle, crowd scenes, choruses, ballet, lavish costumes and sets has a long history in French opera, going back to the court of King Louis XIV, and the old tragedie lyrique. In the 19th century the serious opera was modernized with the use of libretti relating conflict between nations and/or religious groups; exotic persons, situations or settings; and historical figures.

It's easy to see how Verdi's Aida fits into this model. We have a story of national conflict – the Egyptians and Ethiopians – who are exotic by the standards of the Parisian public ca. 1870, as was the entire setting. To that is added a favorite Italian theme, the complex relationship of two lovers who violate their own sense of duty to nation by loving a member of that nation's enemies.

Radames, a leader of the Egyptian army, longs to become the general who will lead his soldiers to victory over the Ethiopians. He is torn by this and his love for the Ethiopian slave Aida. He in turn, is desired by Amneris, the Egyptian princess. Amneris knows of his attraction to Aida and is jealous.

Radames is chosen to lead the Egyptian army. In a big send-off for battle, the crowd roars "Ritorna vincitor!" (Return victorius). Aida is so caught up in her love for Radames that she too cries "Ritorna vincitor". She immediately gasps and asks herself, "Victory against my own people?" Torn by divided loyalties to her people and her lover, she pours out her agony in the following aria.

Successful in battle, Radames leads the triumphal march on stage, with soldiers, trumpets, captives and spoils of war. Unknown to him, one of the captives is Amonasro, King of the Ethopians and father of Aida. She recognizes him but does not reveal his identity. They meet in a famous scene in which he requires her to coax Radames into revealing the route of march of the Egyptians, so that the remaining Ethiopians can attack them. Aida is horrified at the thought of betraying her lover, but her father is merciless in forcing her to do his will.

When they meet, Radames and Aida dream of a land where they can live in peace and far from the conflicts that beset them. She leads him to reveal the line of march of the Egyptian army, which Amonasro overhears. Caught in his betrayal of these military secrets he is arrested and tried by the council of priests. He is condemned to death in a sealed tomb.

In the tomb Radames thinks of Aida and is then startled to find her in the tomb with him. She has slipped in to die with him. As they expire, they sings a serene duet for which Verdi himself wrote the words. In a letter to his librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni Verdi wrote:

"At the end I should like to avoid the conventional death scene, and not have words like, ‘My senses fail me. I go before you. Wait for me. She is dead, but I still live' and so on. I want something sweet, ethereal, quite a short duet, a farewell to life. . . I shall write out the last scene, to make my meaning clearer."

Ghislanzoni was slow in getting the actual words back to Verdi, so the composer ended up composing the music to his own words. The whole story of this final, tender scene is told by Charles Osborne in The Complete Operas of Verdi.

OperaSLO's Aida will be performed at the Performing Arts Center on the Cal Poly campus, on Saturday, October 11 at 7pm and Sunday, October 12, at 2pm. Tickets are on sale now and available online at Opera SLO.org or by calling 805-756-4849.