Aida by Giuseppe Verdi

Verdi's Aida is an opera so venerable and beloved that it has actually become legendary. It's not that the story is a legend, however. All sorts of legends have grown up around the opera itself. Some true -- and some not.

For example, you'll often hear that this extravagant opera, set in ancient Egypt, was first performed at the dedication of the Suez Canal. Surely, that would have made for a spectacular and historic event. That is, it would have if it ever actually happened. It didn't (though the opera did debut in Cairo). But Aida does have some history with the Suez Canal, in the form of another legend -- a colorful man who may have actually written the opera's story.

Auguste-Edouard Mariette was a Frenchman who is generally credited with writing the story behind Aida. He's also remembered as -- no surprise here -- an Egyptologist. Mariette's discoveries in Egypt were considered the most important ever made up to that time. (No, he did not discover the skeleton of an Ethiopian princess entombed under a pyramid somewhere along with her Egyptian lover.)

But if Egyptology was his vocation, writing seems to have been his avocation. Legend has it that Mariette wrote a short story about a star-crossed romance and had it published by a sort of vanity press. Eventually, it found its way to Verdi, who fell in love with it, and the rest is history, right? Well in fact, all he may done was stick his name on the title page. Because, as it happens, the story of Aida bears a remarkable resemblance to another 19th-century Italian opera.

That one, called Nabucco, was written by Giuseppe Verdi. Well, the music was, anyway. Like most composers, Verdi used a number of librettists to write the texts of his operas, and the author of Aida was, in all likelihood, the same man who wrote the similar libretto for Nabucco as well as several other Verdi operas. His name was Temistocle Solera. Verdi and Solera worked well together -- until Solera bailed out on the composer in the middle of their collaboration on the opera Attila. After that, the two men didn't speak for a quarter of a century. In the meantime, Solera had all manner of colorful adventures, including a trip to Egypt, where he was head honcho for the gala opening of -- you guessed it -- the Suez Canal.

Solera also continued to write prose, as a comparison of the libretto for Nabucco and the story of Aida makes very clear. Solera knew that Aida would be a perfect libretto for Verdi's next project. He also knew the composer would refuse the commission if he ever discovered the true identity of the author. So, Solera may put the story down, and then asked Mariette to "put the scenes in order" and then claim it for himself -- to divert Verdi's attention from the true author. If that happened, Verdi probably saw through the ruse. But he loved Aida from the beginning. Time had mellowed Verdi's attitude toward his old librettist -- though not enough to give Solera the job of writing the opera's final libretto. That task went to Antonio Ghislanzoni. Solera probably never saw a production of Aida.

By now, of course, Aida may well be Verdi's most beloved opera -- so it's appropriate that the Metropolitan Opera presents it as this week's broadcast, 100 years to the day from Verdi's death. And this week on At the Opera, host Lou Santacroce and some of his regular guests throw a little Verdi tribute of their own. First, author Will Berger tells us why a composer who wrote his music during the horse-and-buggy era is more relevant than ever in this age when most music, lamentably, tends to reach us only after digital compression. Then, we'll hear insights on one of opera's most enduring heroines from soprano Martina Arroyo and feminist psychologist Phyllis Chesler. That's At the Opera, 30 minutes before curtain at the Met, from NPR.

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