West Meets East: A Close Look at Verdi’s Exotic View of Egypt

For all its Egyptian splendor, Aida is firmly rooted in the European musical tradition. This is nowhere more apparent than in the settings of two of the opera’s most “Egyptian” texts: the battle cry “Su! del Nilo al sacro lido” (“Up! To the sacred shore of the Nile,” Track 48) and the chorus in the triumphal scene, “Gloria al Egitto” (“Glory to Egypt,” Track 32). Both are closely modeled on Western military marches. Even the famous Triumphal March (see Musical Highlight: Five Little Pitches) is Western in rhythm and tempo.

The few bits of orientalism in the score of Aida are mostly heard from offstage. For instance, Act I, Scene 2, opens with the singing of an unseen priestess as she prays to the god Ptah (Track 49). Her song is sinuous and lush, with a distinct Middle Eastern flavor, accompanied at the end by a chorus of priestesses in dark, mysterious harmony. (Interestingly, Verdi had reason to know there were no female priestesses in Egypt. He apparently consulted with an authority on ancient Egypt before deciding to create some.)

Supposed sounds of the East can also be heard at the beginning of Act III, which takes place on the banks of the Nile. To a very soft, sparse accompaniment of strings (Track 50), an undulating flute emerges, beckoning and teasing with trills and leaps like a genie rising from a lamp (Track 51). Yet the priests and priestesses ostensibly dedicated to the goddess Isis sound more like Christian monks practiced in Gregorian chant—about as European as it gets (Track 52).

The entire priests of Isis sequence can be heard on Track 53.

Prayers to Ptah are heard once more at the end of the opera, but these differ from the serpentine chant of Act I’s priestess. In Track 54, Radamès and Aida, entombed alive beneath the temple, share a final duet. They are interrupted in Track 55 by the percussive sounds of a priestly invocation. This prayer has less of Act I’s Eastern exoticism. It peaks and falls incessantly, steady as a living heart, impregnable as the Great Pyramid. Meanwhile the lovers prepare for death, gasping, in Track 56: “Heaven opens!” Any contrast between Eastern and Western music Thas been supplanted by a more universal opposition: between the bland persistent beat of a physical heart and the lyricism of a spiritual one, lovely and liquid, though doomed.

This excerpt from the final scene can be heard, continuously, on Track 57.