This operatic rollercoaster ride is as engaging as any 21st-century Netflix drama

Verdi’s Aida is a powerful paradox: a breathtaking grand opera that is also intensely intimate.

Set design for the opera Aida by Giuseppe Verdi. Bolshoi Theatre Museum, Moscow. Credit: Album / Alamy Stock Photo RCTFG1

Aida, Giuseppe Verdi, Metropolitan Opera New York New Production, 27^th March 2025

When the recently self-appointed chair of Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts decided to commission a new, follow up celebratory opera to mark the return of the Panama Canal to American corporate control, President Donald Trump was surprised to be told that Giuseppe Verdi was already dead.

“Get me the great guy who wrote that beautiful opera, Aida, you know, about the opening of the Suez Canal. It made those incredible Egyptians billions. Boy, they knew how to drain that beautiful desert.”

Many Aida myths swirl in Egypt’s desert sands. For starters, the opera was commissioned to mark the opening of the Cairo opera house, not the canal. It’s mythology. Originally, Verdi had been asked to write a short work to mark the inauguration. He refused. But eventually struck a deal to write an opera. Verdi trousered 150,000 Francs, about £1m in today’s moolah.

The props and costumes for Aida were, however, stuck in Paris, besieged in the raging Franco-Prussian war. Peace came in May 1871. So Isma’il Pasha, the Khedive who westernised Cairo and bankrupted the country with his ambitious Hausmann style rebuilding plans, had to make do with Verdi’s Rigoletto on opening night. Aida came later, December 24^th, 1871.

Verdi didn’t attend. He was a cautious traveller and convinced himself there was some risk of being mummified. Fortunately, he was not a cautious composer, delivering the grandest opera masterpiece for his patron.

New York’s Metropolitan Opera is staging a new production this season, ending the glorious reign of Sonja Frisell’s 1988 monumental version, which has played the house 240 times. Since 1886 Aida has clocked 1,176 performances on the Met Opera odometer.

This production comes from Michael Meyer, an American director with strong Broadway genes, responsible for Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded, opener of the 24/25 Met season. Christine Jones designed the set. She, too, has Broadway and London’s West End blood coursing through her veins.

So, perhaps I should not have been too surprised when the first character to appear during the prelude, descending from the flies on a sling preceded by a sprinkling trickle of dust, was Indiana Jones. Complete with jaunty dark tan fedora, wide brim, pinched crown et al. What on earth? Aida aka Raiders of the Lost Opera?

It was a meme. The idea was to have 19^th century explorers stumble across a 2000 BC vault and bring the characters of the era to life. Hardly original. The same trick was pulled in Elton John and Tim Rice’s 2000 Aida musical. They used the setting of a museum to revivify the ancients.

The problem was the explorers didn’t just say “Hi!” and move on. Guided tours invaded the plot, casually and sporadically. A solitary figure observed the closing tragic moments in the tomb from a distance. Their participation in the grand march, featuring a parade of looted treasure – Ah, that’s where the elephant went! – reduced the opera’s most solemn, processional moment to low farce.

Let me get my other gripe with this production out of the way early. The closing scene is one of the most moving in all opera. Aida (Ethiopian princess and enslaved servant of Amneris) is entombed, by her own choice, with her lover Radamès, (Egyptian General). He has been condemned to death for telling Aida where the Egyptian army, his lot, was going to attack the Ethiopians, her lot.

Just imagine if during a West Wing Cabinet meeting secret plans for war in Yemen were leaked in a group chat to an outspoken journalist! Unthinkable. Only in opera. Life is sometimes just a different, less credible opera.

Back at the Met the scene is staged on two levels. Below, the tomb where Aida and Radamès are dying in each other’s arms. Above them, unaware of events unfolding below, Amneris. Thus, completing the drama of the fateful love triangle driving the opera’s plot. She prostrates herself on the stone blocking the entrance to the tomb, wracked by guilt and regret.

Verdi’s score is ethereal, wisping away to near silence as he slowly withdraws the brass and other bass instruments from the orchestra, leaving only the ethereal sounds of high violins and woodwind. The lovers expire, singing softly:

“Yes, in the stars

We shall at last be free.

Forever free.”

Suddenly, dramatically, in an unexpected coda, just when you thought not another ounce of emotion could be screwed out of the libretto, Verdi delivers a volte-face. The embittered Amneris, in a closing line sings gently to the unseen Radamès:

“Grant me your pardon, oh my beloved.

And Isis grant you eternal rest. Pardon! Pardon!”

It is a moment of breath-taking beauty, regret and penitence. There is nothing more to be said. Hanky drenching.

But Meyer can’t leave it alone. Not dramatic enough. Broadway instincts kick in, and Amneris suddenly stabs herself with a dagger. He’s seen too many Madama Butterflies.

The poignancy of that climactic moment, which familiar Aida audiences anticipate and to which newcomers thrill on first acquaintance, is one of the genius Verdi’s crowning achievements. Destroyed by Meyer as surely as if he had blown up the set with a carefully calculated charge of Semtex.

But was I wrong? Is this suicide a common ending which I had somehow missed in all the Aida’s I’ve seen? Check! It’s not in the stage directions of the libretto.

Then I consulted my oracle. That Verdi seer. The all-seeing Maestro Joseph Colaneri, Musical Director of The Glimmerglass Opera Festival, frequent Guest Lecturer at the Metropolitan Opera Club, conductor of Opera Utah’s Pagliacci, reviewed in Reaction.

His verdict was concise: “A director’s conceit!” I rest my case. End of self-indulgent gripe. As Aida is possibly the best-known opera on planet earth, I shall spare readers the synopsis but leave a link for visitors from the recently discovered exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri – here.

Aida is a paradox. On one scale a grand opera with chorus and triumphant march, sometimes when Verona’s Zoo allows, a procession of elephants. Yet on the other it is intimate.

Almost a chamber opera, the story is based on two triangular relationships, Radamès, Aida and Amneris, the love triangle. Then the duty to homeland triangle, Aida, her father Amonasro - Ethiopian - and Radamès - Egyptian.

The drama unfolds as a conflict between those two sentiments, a common Verdi trope, which crops up in a different form in his 1867 Don Carlos, where loyalty to state is pitched against loyalty to church.

In Aida Verdi uses the device to conjure up as engaging a roller coaster ride of a tragedy as any 21^st century Netflix drama.

Aida’s duty lies with her homeland and father Amonasro, the Ethiopian King. But she is torn apart by her love for Radamès, the Egyptian general charged with defeating Amonasro’s army.

An Egyptian general has no business being in love with a slave captured in war with a sworn enemy. He doesn’t know at the start that Aida is a princess, daughter of the Ethiopian King. He will end up betraying his country and the High Priests will condemn him to death.

Amneris who loves Radamès knows he does not love her, but relies on his loyalty to her father, the Pharaoh who offers her hand in marriage to his victorious general to make him hers. She’ll worry about the details later.

They will rule in glory. Maybe host a podcast. Better than settling for a ticket to a free Sabrina Carpenter concert. Power fosters a sense of entitlement. Clothes, glasses, Arsenal boxes, concerts, that kind of thing. Amneris has simpler tastes. A complimentary gig at the altar.

Richard Wagner was sprawling in his librettos. Verdi travelled in the opposite direction. His librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni received regular correspondence with the injunction “troppo parole” (too many words). Cut to the chase. No repeats. Tell the story. Keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

And Verdi’s score drove on to match the taut libretto. Example. In Act III Scene I there is a confrontation between Aida and her father that sets the hairs bristling on the neck. Amonasro is attempting to induce Aida to cajole Radamès to tell her where his army will strike.

He blames his daughter for the destruction that will befall their country if she fails. She hesitates. He hits her hard. “Betrayed by my daughter!”. He conjures up ghosts of the dead, arising and accusing her, “’Tis you who wrought our doom”. Then he administers a devastating coup de grace:

Amonasro

“Up from a mire of misery one of the

pallid wretches … watch her …

she sways and stretches, groping to

find your brow! YES, ‘TIS YOUR MOTHER.

You’re shuddering, hearing her curses!”

Aida (in utmost terror)

“Oh no, my father, not that, not that!””

Amonasro

“You’re not my daughter. YOU ARE NO

MORE THAN A SLAVE OF EGYPT!!

Wow! And double wow! The subtitles can’t keep pace with this blistering onslaught. Surprise, surprise, Aida folds. The passage is delivered with staccato music, each note helping Amonasro hammer home the bitter nail of every word.

This is Verdi’s conclusive answer to the “what’s the point of opera?” question. I can’t recall a two-minute passage of arms in any other artform that delivers such a profound impact. A combination of vocal, orchestral forces and human emotion. Triple wow!

The introduction of Indiana Jones had me waiting with bated breath for a cast kitted out in outlandish faux Egyptian clobber. Thankfully, Susan Hilferty, responsible for Wicked – there’s that Broadway influence again – did a magnificent job. Enough bling, no kitsch!

Christine Jones, also a Broadway familiar, designed a set that literally brought Egypt to life, gently illuminated hieroglyphs and carvings evolving into the performing characters. They seemed to emerge from the ancient stone pillars. This set will stand the test of time, as did Sonja Frisell’s.

British Maestro, Alexander Soddy, led a top form Met Orchestra in this performance. A Wagner specialist rapidly gaining international renown, he conjured magic in the pit. Example. Scene I of Act III opens on the banks of the Nile. Verdi presents the most delicate, atmospheric music, transporting you to Egypt as surely as Thomas Cook. Woodwind and violins whisper the sounds of water and wildlife. You are standing on the bank.

A full cast list for the January – March run is to be found here. This performance featured the “second” cast. Second only in sequence. Not quality. Aida was Swedish soprano Christina Nilsson. A Met debut.

Dare I say, I preferred her to Angel Blue, a Met regular. Blue’s performances are less theatrically convincing. Nilsson telegraphed a sense of Aida’s desperation. No more so than in that passage of arms with her father.

I tip my hat again to Maestro Colaneri whose lecture on Aida to the Metropolitan Opera Club I sneakily listened to pre-performance. I confess to drawing liberally on his thoughts but make no apology. Ultimate authority.

Verdi operas tell stories for everyone. They benefit from just a modicum of effort from an audience to extract full value from the performance experience. There is so much nuance in the words. The Aida libretto is a 30-minute romping read. Compared to the dead pan programme synopsis, it is a page-turning thriller.

You wouldn’t embark on a book in Serbo-Croat without understanding the language. Don’t “do” Aida without reading the libretto.

If for no other reason that you’ll be one up on the beautiful new Chair of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Let’s Make Aida Great Again.