We will see the Met’s

1989 monumental

staging of Verdi’s 1871

opera Aida. You want

spectacle? We got it

here. The Met’s huge

stage is put to good use

in some very dramatic

scenes. Placido

Domingo is the leading

man in a love triangle

in ancient Egypt.

The Pharaoh’s daughter is ga-ga over

him but he has fallen for Aida, a black

Nubian (Ethiopian) slave.

In ancient times interracial marriages were much more

common than now. The bible says (Numbers 12:1) that Moses

had a black wife – from the same region (Ethiopia) as Aida came

from in the opera. As Yogi Berra said, you could look it up.

The love triangle plays out

slowly. The Pharaoh’s

daughter does not know at

first that her personal

slave, Aida, is her rival. She

imagines she will someday

marry Radames, the other

leg of the love tringle, who

is an acclaimed military

general, while he instead

loves Aida. The Pharaoh’s

daughter is a person not to

be trifled with.

Aida, a slave, is a war-captured

Ethiopian princess, daughter of the leader

of their army, enemies of the Egyptians.

The Egyptian war chariot,

that the opera’s Radames

character would have

ridden, was an invention

that transformed warfare.

The chariot was invented

about 2000 B.C. and was

dependent on the invention

of the spoked wheel. Since

it was made mostly of wood

and leather few of the

ancient ones have survived

well over the ages.

The date of oldest known

chariot was determined

without any direct evidence

at all of the actual chariot

itself. Instead the unseen

chariot was dated from a

single horse tooth with the

distinctive wear pattern due

to the type of bit used in

chariots. The tooth was

dated by Carbon 14 analysis.

This was a very clever piece of archaeological detective work. Recently

on the PBS TV show NOVA attempts were made to construct an actual

Egyptian war chariot based on ancient images. They found that it is a

very sophisticated device despite its apparent simplicity.

No specific time setting is given in Aida, other than ancient Egypt.

The three most famous ancient Egyptians today would be Queen

Nefertiti, the great beauty, her husband Pharaoh Akhenaton – the

inventor of monotheism, and their son King Tut – whose fabulous

tomb treasure was discovered. This was one strange family.

Akhenaton may have mamhavemarriedhavearried hismother

Akhenaton may have married

his mother. He was a very odd

looking bird. Unlike all pharaohs

before and after him, who were

portrayed in art in highly stylized

ways unrelated to their actual

looks, Akhenaton ordered that

he be shown as he actually was

– which was very weird looking.

This statue shows his strangely

narrow head, his long chin and

jaw and his oddly feminine hips.

He had some sort of medical

condition that the experts today

cannot agree upon.

Of course there is the famous Pharaoh in the bible, in the Exodus story.

But the identity of that Pharaoh as well as the date for the Exodus is still

a hotly contested topic among Egyptologists. We all know the biblical

story of Moses parting the Red Sea (actually the Reed Sea) and how it

then swallowed up the pursuing Egyptian troops.

The bible does not say what happened to the Pharaoh. But it is likely that

as the top military commander he would have led his troops in pursuing the

fleeing Hebrews. The Jews have had an oral history for over 3000 years of

events and stories that were not incorporated into the bible when that was

codified (such as that King David had red hair). One such legend is that the

Pharaoh’s chariot overturned and crushed his leg. Remarkably the mummy

of a pharaoh who may have been the pharaoh of the Exodus story shows

that he had a crushed leg and may have died from infection. Probably a

coincidence but who knows?

Late in his career Verdi

slowed down a lot and mostly

did some revisions of his

earlier operas. He somewhat

reluctantly agreed to a new

opera, Aida, because a lot of

money was promised and he

needed it for some house

renovations he was doing.

Hey, we can relate to that.

Aida had its premier

in Cairo in 1871