Is "Aida" an Orientalist Opera?
Author(s): Paul Robinson
Source: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jul., 1993), pp. 133-140
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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CambridgeOperaJournal,5, 2, 133-140
Is Aida an orientalist opera?
PAUL ROBINSON
Among the more remarkableevents of recent intellectual history is that Edward
Said, famous avant-gardeliterary critic, passionate advocate for the Palestinian
cause, has begun to write about music. Moreover, not just about any kind of
music, but about classical music in the elite (and canonical) European tradition
- the symphonies of Beethoven, the operas of Wagner, the chamber music of
Schubert and Brahms. Severalyears ago Said took over the music column in The
Nation magazine,and more recently he has published a book, MusicalElaborations,
basedon a seriesof invited lectures at the University of Californiaat Irvine.
Most of Said'smusicalwritings have been innocent of the theoreticalandideological concerns that distinguishhis literary criticism and his politics. He comes across
as a knowledgeable music lover, with a special devotion to the great German
composers of the long nineteenth century (from Mozart to Strauss).As it turns
out, Said is himself a pianist, who enjoys playing chamber music with friends.
I have for some time suspected that music offers him a kind of asylum, a realm
of unguardedpleasure, where he can lay aside the heavy burdens of his scholarly
and political callings.In a world of pure sound, to which no representativemeaning
can be attached, he is liberated from the need to be ever watchful for orientalist
subtexts or anti-Arabprejudices.
But not always. Instrumental music may be largely without denotative significance, but opera is another matter. Opera weds music to language and hence
to literature - and often to politics as well. Thus, not surprisingly, when he has
turned his attention to opera, Said has sometimes found himself on more familiar
intellectualterrain(where, if I am right in my speculation,music no longer provides
the wanted asylum). A case in point is his review of John Adams's The Death
of Klinghoffer,which treats the Achille Lauro incident. In general Adams's opera
got rather frosty notices from the musical press. Said, however, greeted it with
enthusiasm in TheNation, partly, one suspects,becauseof the opera's sympathetic
treatment of the Palestinians. An earlier example - and the one I wish to devote
my attention to in this note - is an essay Said wrote in 1987 for Grand Street
on Aida. Entitled 'The Imperial Spectacle', the essay can fairly be described as
an effort to interpretAida as a product of Europe's developing imperialistculture
in the nineteenth century. (With only slight modification, the essay has been
This essay was first presentedin October 1992 at a conference at SyracuseUniversity entitled
'Designing Italy: "Italy" in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas'. The proceedings of the
conference are to be published in a volume edited by Beverly Allen, Ayele Bekerie and Mary
Russo.
134
PaulRobinson
incorporated into Said's new book, Culture and Imperialism[Knopf, 1993].) In
other words, it aims to understand this most famous of Italian operas in terms
of Said's theory of orientalism - the theory that the whole of Europe's culture
is deeply inscribedwith invidious representationsof the non-EuropeanOther.
Said's contention that Aida is implicated in Europe's imperial order is in some
respects unexceptionable. He draws attention, for example, to the circumstances
of the opera's composition. Verdi was commissioned to write the opera by the
Viceroy (or Khedive) of Egypt, Ismail, who wanted an opera by one of Europe's
foremost composers for his new opera house in Cairo, which itself had been
built in connection with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. (Had Verdi
refusedhim the Viceroy was preparedto turn to Wagneror Gounod.) Put crudely,
Verdi's opera was to form part of the cultural superstructureof the European
presence in Egypt, a presence that reached back to the Napoleonic invasions at
the end of the eighteenth century and that, by the time of Aida's premiere in
1871, had transformedEgypt into a semi-colony. Indeed,the opera, as Said rightly
says, was intended as 'an imperial article de luxe',1 purchased to entertain the
Europeanpopulation of Cairo, a population whose real purpose was to administer
Egypt as a piece of Europe's overseasempire. With a certainsymbolic appropriateness, the new opera house - modelled on the neo-classicalopera houses that sprang
up throughout Europe in the nineteenth century - was located on the north-south
axis dividing the eastern Moslem portion of the city from the western European
portion. Naturally, its portalsfacedwestward.On this imperialsite Verdi'sbrilliant
operatic displaywas first seen and heard.
At the same time, Aida is of course an opera about ancient Egypt and, as such,
was intended by Ismail to serve as a significant piece of nationalistic propaganda.
Verdi seems to have cared nothing for this objective, and, as far as anyone has
been able to tell, he never expressed an opinion about modern Egypt, although
he was often told that his opera would do much to advanceits cultural consciousness. A substantial part of Said's argument depends on his drawing attention to
the origins of the opera'sstory in the richly elaboratedtraditionsof French orientalist scholarship. Aida is in fact based on a scenario written by the great French
Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, a scenario that Mariette urged on Verdi through
the offices of their mutual acquaintanceCamille du Locle, the Director of the
Opera-Comique in Paris. Said views Mariette as driven by the ideological desire
to 'stage'(p. 89) Egypt for Europeanculturalconsumption. His scenarioconstructs
an Egypt that is a locus of satisfactorilygrandEuropeanorigins but, more important, an Egypt that has been orientalised - rendered exotic - so that it can find
its appropriatelysubordinateplace in Europe's imperial imagination. Said makes
the ingenious speculation that the settings and costumes Mariette proposed for
the opera were directly inspired by the idealisedreconstructions of ancient Egypt
contained in the anthropological volumes of Napoleon's Descriptionde l'Egypte,
perhapsthe first greatdocument to packageEgypt for Europe's imperial consumption. In this fashion the famous scenes in the opera - the Royal Palacein Memphis,
' EdwardW.
Said, 'The ImperialSpectacle',GrandStreet,6/2 (Winter 1987), 103. Hereafter,
page referencesto this articlewill appearin parenthesesin the text.
IsAidaanorientalistopera?
135
the Templeof Vulcan,the Gateof Thebes- aretransformedinto tableauxvivants
fromthe pagesof Napoleon'sDescription.
Of course,any discussionthat confinesitselfto the circumstances
of the opera's
commissionor the origin of its libretto and mise en scene,while illuminating,
does not really get us to the heart of the matter.Aida is an orientalistopera
only if the dramaVerdi actuallyconstructed- underthose circumstancesand
out of those materials- embodiesthe ideologicalprojectSaidascribesto it. Above
all, it is an orientalistoperaonly if its ideologicalagendais significantlyembodied
in its music. For, as JosephKermanhas shown, in opera the composeris the
dramatist.Thingsthat can be identifiedsolely in the text and that do not find
expressionin the musicfor all practicalpurposesceaseto exist. As we all know,
a good deal of what is utteredin opera is incomprehensible,and not merely
becauseit is usuallyutteredin a languagewe cannot understand.If Aida is an
orientalistopera,then,it will haveto be becauseof its music.
An immediateembarrassment
confrontsSaid'stheoryaboutAida:althoughthe
does
indeed
an
opera
represent imperialistsituation,it is an imperialistsituation
in which Egypt itself plays the role of aggressor.Verdi'sEgypt is an imperial
power seekingto subdueits Africanneighbour,Ethiopia.Indeed,the operais
set againstthe backgroundof Egypt'swar of conquestagainstEthiopia(as well
as the guerrillaresponseof the Ethiopians),and its conventionalromanticplot
turns on a conflict between desireand patriotismin which a young Egyptian
generalfinds himselfin love with an Ethiopianslave,the captureddaughterof
the Kingof Ethiopia.In termsof Said'sorientalistmetaphor,white Egyptought
properlyto be equatedwith imperialEurope,while blackEthiopiastandsunambiOther.Furthermore,Verdi's
guouslyin the role of the imperialised
non-European
sympathiesin the operaarewholeheartedlyon the Ethiopianside.Egyptis representedasan authoritarian
theocracy,tyrannisedby its intolerantpriesthood,while
and
Ethiopia 'conquered tormented',in the wordsof its wily andheroicleader
- is repeatedlycelebratedas a country of vernalbeauty and naturalrectitude.
In his correspondence,Verdi referredto Egypt as 'a land that once possessed
a grandeurand a civilisationthat I could neverbringmyselfto admire'.2Under
these circumstances,
Said'scontentionthatAida servesto 'stage'Egyptfor Europeanimperialconsumptionbeginsto look ratherdubious.A morenaturalreading
would be to see the operaas an anti-imperialist
work, in which the exploitative
relationbetween Europeand its empire has been translatedinto one between
expansionistEgyptiansand colonisedEthiopians.Revealingly,when fascistproducersstagedAidain Mussolini'sItaly,theyoftenpresentedablackshirted
Radames
Amonasro's
and
Amonasro
himself
became
an
obvious
subduing
Ethiopianhordes,
stand-infor EmperorHaileSelassie,engagedin a bloodyanti-colonialist
waragainst
contemporaryItaly.
TheantithesisbetweenmilitaristicEgyptandsufferingEthiopiais not, moreover,
merelythe dramaticbackdropof Aida. It is also deeplyembeddedin the music
Verdi composedto representthe two nations.Egypt is characterised
by music
2
Letterto CamilleduLocledated19February1868,quotedin JulianBudden,TheOperas
III(London,
of Verdi,
1981),161.
136
PaulRobinson
that is regular,diatonic and brassy- music that can be described,I think, as
distinctlyEuropean,in so far as it finds Verdi relying on the most traditional
harmonic, melodic and rhythmic means to conjure up an impression of power,
authority and military might. Two prominent musical episodes can serve to illustrate this association of Egypt with an aggressivelytraditional European idiom.
The first is the 'battle hymn', 'Su! del Nilo', sung by the king and Ramfis and
then by the assembled Egyptians in Act I as they prepare to send their army
into combat with the Ethiopians. The piece is four-square,closed and classical,
its harmonies familiar, and its accompanimentemphatic. Significantly,Verdi himself feared that the tune smacked of the Marseillaise,which puts it firmly on
the European side of the imperialist divide. A similar instance is the 'victory
hymn', 'Gloria all'Egitto', which the Egyptians sing after they return from thoroughly defeating (indeed enslaving) the Ethiopians. Musically, it is constructed
of the same stuff as 'Su! del Nilo', only it is even noisier and, appropriately,
more triumphalist. Viceroy Ismail was so pleased with this tune that he wanted
to adopt it as the Egyptian national anthem, in spite of the fact that it is much
too short. One final feature of Verdi's musical treatment of the Egyptians needs
to be noted: he typically sets the music for Ramfis and the Egyptian priests within
a contrapuntal texture, thereby linking them musically with one of the oldest,
most traditional, and most European of musical procedures, associatedabove all,
of course, with the religious music of Johann SebastianBach.
Unlike the Egyptians, the Ethiopians are given no collective musical expression
in the opera. Rather their concerns find voice in the two principal Ethiopian
characters, Amonasro and Aida. Much of the time, to be sure, Amonasro and
Aida sing in an idiom that is not markedly different from the high European
style that Verdi uses for all his major charactersin the opera. But on a number
of significant occasions Aida in particularis allowed to speak of her native land
- whose luxurious beauty she contrasts with the aridity of Egypt - and on these
occasions Verdi sets her utterances at the polar opposite of the sort of music
he writes for his massedEgyptians.Insteadof four-squarediatonic marchingtunes,
he writes music distinguished by its sinuous irregularity, its long legato lines,
its close intervals, its chromatic harmonies and its subdued woodwind orchestration, in which the reedy tones of the oboe play an especially prominent part.
At such moments Aida's music verges on the exotic. Perhaps the most famous
example is her apostropheto the virgin forests of Ethiopia, as she seeks to persuade
Radames to flee with her back to her native land. It conjures up a world of
alien loveliness - the world, I would suggest,of the non-EuropeanOther.
Having constructed this antithesis between imperial, Europeanised Egypt and
oppressed, orientalised Ethiopia, I should not leave the impression that there is
no basis in the opera's music for Edward Said's claim that Aida presents, as he
puts it, 'an Orientalized Egypt' (p. 92). On the contrary, a not inconsiderable
amount of music associated with the Egyptians in the opera is written in the
peculiar 'oriental' style devised by nineteenth-centuryEuropean composers - particularly French composers - to treat exotic subjects. This oriental music can
be characterisedin terms of a number of almost cliched melodic, harmonic and
IsAidaan orientalistopera?
137
timbraldevices,which I need not describehere and which bear no necessary
relationto the actualmusicalpracticesof non-Europeancultures.It's the sort
of musicthatwe associatewith snake-charmers.
Theseconventionswererecognised
at the time (andcan still be recognisedtoday)as denotingthe strange,the exotic,
in aword,the 'oriental'.Theymaketheirsignificanthistoricaldebutin Meyerbeer's
whichtook Europeby stormin the 1860sandmadeastrongimpression
L'Africaine,
on Verdi.They can also be heardin a numberof other operasthat areroughly
contemporaneouswith Aida, notably Carmen,Le Roi de Lahoreand above all
Samsonet Dalila. We must, then, considerVerdi'sdeploymentof these exotic
or orientalconventionsin Aida in order to assessSaid'sclaim that the opera
presents'anOrientalizedEgypt'.
Verdiconfineshis orientalmusicin the operato two functions,both of them
ceremonial:he usesit for liturgicalexercisesandfor ballets.None of the principal
Egyptiancharactersexpresseshim or herself,as it were, orientally.Rather,all
their singingis in Verdi'sstandardhigh Europeanmode, as is all the choraland
marchmusiche writesfor the assembledEgyptianmasses.(In purelyquantitative
terms,the orientalidiom occursin no more than a tenth of the opera'smusic.)
None the less,the orientalstyle canbe heardin threeimportantliturgicalepisodes
- first,in the greatConsecrationScenein the Templeof Vulcan,whereRadames
for the comingbattlewith the Ethiopians;second,
performsthe ritualpreparations
atthe beginningof theNile Scene,whichopenswithpriestsandpriestesseschanting
in the templeof Isis;and,finally,in the lastsceneof the opera,the Tomb Scene,
where, sealedin a vault below the Temple of Vulcan,Aida and Radamessing
their final duet as the priestessesabove are againheardintoning the liturgical
chantthatwe know fromthe earlierConsecrationScene.A related- albeitlivelier
- exotic musicallanguageis usedby Verdifor the opera'sthreeballets:the dance
of the priestessesin the ConsecrationScene,the danceof the LittleMoorishSlaves
in Amneris'sapartments,and the "seven-part
grandballet in the middleof the
TriumphalScene.In total, there are three liturgicalscenesand three balletsfor
whichVerdicomposes'oriental'music.
Severalconsiderations,
however,undermineanyreadyor unqualifiedassociation
of this exotic liturgicalandballetmusicwith the Egyptians.Theseconsiderations
accountfor our tendencyto hearthis musicas somehowbelongingto a different
sonic realmfrom that normallyinhabitedby the Egyptians.In some casesthe
dissociationoccurs becausethe performersin a particularliturgicalepisodeor
ballet are either themselvesnon-Egyptiansor are connectedwith non-Egyptian
Thus, most obviously, the Little Moorish Slaveswho entertain
paraphernalia.
Amneris are of course captives- like the Ethiopians,they are the victims of
Egyptianimperialism- so the exotic characterof theirdancemusichardlyserves
to createwhatSaidcalls'anOrientalizedEgypt'.If anything,it hasjustthe opposite
effect. Likewise,the dancersin the TriumphalScene ballet,while presumably
Egyptian,'performtheir stepsaroundthe idols andtrophiestakenfrom the conso that the exotic musicof the balletcomesto be associated
queredEthiopians',3
3 Budden, III, 226.
138
Paul Robinson
in our minds less with Egypt than with Ethiopia. Interestingly, in the famous
Berlin production of Aida by Wieland Wagner (which I saw in the early 1960s),
the whole Triumphal Scene took the form, as Said accuratelyrecords, of a 'parade
of Ethiopian prisoners carrying totems, masks, ritual objects as elements of an
ethnographic exhibition presented directly to the audience' (pp. 96-7), which was
part of Wieland's effort to transfer the 'setting of the work from the Egypt of
the Pharaohsto the darkerAfrica of a prehistoric age' (p. 97).
Furthermore, one should note that all of the opera's exotic music, in both
its liturgical episodes and its ballets, is associated with women - to the point
that the antithesis between exotic and non-exotic music in Aida comes to seem
a code as much for gender difference as for ethnic difference. Thus the distinctly
exotic chant in the Consecration Scene is sung by a priestess,to which the answers
of the temple priests are set in the familiardiatonic harmoniesof the high European
style. The succeeding ballet for the priestesses - written in the oriental manner
- is, of course, danced exclusively by women. Likewise, the great ballet of the
Triumphal Scene, despite its vigorously masculine music, calls exclusively for ballerinas.Even the dance of the Little Moorish Slaves- already,one would presume,
sufficiently feminised by being so described- is also, Verdi says, to be performed
by ballerinas. The only oriental music in the opera actually assigned to men is
that for the priests in the temple of Isis at the beginning of Act III (the Nile
Scene), and, significantly, their chant again has a feminine association:the priests
sing to 'Isis, mother and bride of Osiris'. One should perhaps note here that
all of the archaeologicalevidence availableto Verdi when he composed the opera
indicated that the ancient Egyptians had no priestesses, only priests, but Verdi
asked Mariette if it might be possible to invent the priestesses, and Mariette no stickler for authenticity - was only too happy to oblige Verdi with as many
priestessesas his heart desired.
Finally, on every occasion when Verdi introduces exotic music into Aida, he
immediately answersit with music of impeccablyoccidentalcredentials.Moreover,
these occidental responses are always set in the mouth of some unambiguously
Egyptian character, either one of the principals (such as Amneris or Ramfis) or
the massed chorus of Egyptian citizens and soldiers. It is as if Verdi were unconsciously seeking to inhibit any association of the Egyptians with the oriental which also explains why, ethnically speaking,Aida's exotic music seems to occupy
a kind of no-man's land. I want to cite here just one instance of this dialectic
of exotic thesis and occidental antithesis, namely, its first occurrence in the opera.
This is the chant of the priestess in the Temple of Vulcan at the start of the
Consecration Scene. The invisible soprano's wailing incantation 'in an invented
Phrygian mode',4 set above distant harps and supported by female choristers,
has many of the musical earmarksof the oriental style, including a repeatedgracenote on the flattened second degree, diminished thirds, augmented seconds, and
a curling arabesque, all of which, in the words of Julian Budden, 'colour the
music with a sense of strange Eastern ritual'.5But the priestess'smelody is imme4
5
Budden, III, 212.
Budden,III,211.
IsAidaanorientalistopera?
139
diately answeredby a litany of the priests,which is composedin the deeply
ingratiatingharmoniesof the high Europeanidiom.I supposeone mightsay that
it is an instance of 'East meets West', except, of course, that all of the singers
are Egyptians. Significantly, I think, the orientalising singer - the priestess - is
female, while the occidentalising ones - the priests - are male.
The same sort of juxtaposition, in which the exotic East is trumped by the
conventional West, occurs in each instance where Verdi momentarily introduces
oriental musicaleffects.Thus the exotic danceof the priestessesin the Consecration
Scene is immediately followed by Ramfis's emphatically diatonic invocation to
the gods, a four-squarearpeggiatedtune with the vocal line firmly supported by
pulsating trombones, and the entire Consecration Scene ends with Ramfis and
Radamestrumpeting the priestess's apotheosis of 'immenso Ftha' in euphonious
thirds, sung at the top of their lungs (and very near the top of their registers
as well). Likewise, the dance of the Little Moorish Slaves is immediately followed
(and, as it were, ideologically cancelled) by the familiar Western harmonies of
Amneris's servants and by Amneris's own sumptuously diatonic invocation of
love. The orientalist extravaganzaof the Triumphal Scene ballet - the most sustained stretch of exotic music in the opera - is followed immediatelyby a repetition
of the pompously Westernisedvictory hymn, 'Gloria all'Egitto'.Finally, the exotic
chant to the goddess Isis at the beginning of the Nile Scene - like the dance
of the priestessesin the Consecration Scene of Act I - gives way to a thoroughly
Western and warmly ingratiating arioso for Ramfis, inviting Amneris into the
temple. Repeatedly, the music of the Occident seems to negate that of the putative
Orient.
I do not want to deny that some of this oriental music, as it were, rubs off
on Egypt, thus giving substance to Said's contention that Aida has the effect
of creating'an Orientalized Egypt', one alluding subliminally to the incorporation
of nineteenth-centuryEgypt into the Europeanempire. Under closer examination,
however, it is not precisely Egypt that is orientalised by Verdi's exotic music
but rather Egypt's imperial victims (the Moors and the Ethiopians), and, among
the Egyptians themselves, state functionariesand entertainers,almost all of whom
turn out to be women (andthus, presumably,not full-fledgedmembersof Egyptian
society). So the ideological import of Verdi's exotic musical gestures in the opera
is more complicated than Said allows, and in some respects at least it seems to
be exactly opposite from the construction he insists on.
If we ask what is the source in Verdi's imagination of the ideological universe
on display in Aida, I would suggest that we look not to Europe's burgeoning
oriental expansion of the late nineteenth century but to the politics of the Italian
risorgimentoin the 1840s.Aida is in fact the last of the operasin which the imprint
of Verdi's deep commitment to the risorgimentocan still be detected. It is heir
to the tradition of operas like Attila, I Lombardiand, above all, Nabucco,in which
the political repression of Italy by the Austrians is metaphorically represented
by the subjugation of the ancient Hebrews under the Babylonians. In Verdi's
imagination, Italy was always a colonised country, the victim of Habsburg imperialism. In writing Aida, I would contend, he associated Ethiopia with Italy, just
140
PaulRobinson
as he associatedEgyptwith HabsburgAustria.Likewise,Ramfisandthe Egyptian
anti-clericalism;
priesthoodareproductsof Verdi'srisorgimento
they areequated
in his mind with the HabsburgCatholichierarchyand the reactionarypolitics
of the Roman papacy.The ideologicalheart of Aida, so to speak,lies in the
magnificentoutburstof Amonasroin his duet with Aida,where he callson her
to rememberher people'conqueredandtormented'('vinto,straziato').Verdisets
Amonasro'spleaon one of thosegreatarchingphrasesof whichhe wasthe supreme
master, carrying the voice upward in an arc of passion to a sustained high note,
and then bringing it back down to rest in the sonic territory from which it began.
It is my favourite phrase in the opera - a wonderful opportunity for the high
baritone - and it identifies Amonasro and the Ethiopians with all those conquered
and divided nations that people Verdi's risorgimentooperas of the 1840s and that
stand for his own 'conqueredand tormented' Italy.
In sum, one can make much more sense of the politics of Aida if one regards
it first and foremost as an Italian opera, rather than an orientalist opera, and
if one sees it as the final instalment in the tradition of Verdi's political operas
reaching back to the 1840s. This perspective also accounts for the opera's musical
conservatism. In spite of its sophistication and refinement, Aida is still at heart
a traditional number opera, whose musical languagelooks backwardto Rigoletto
and Trovatorerather than forward to Otello and Falstaff,just as its politics look
back to the risorgimentoratherthan forwardto the fully realisedEuropeanimperium.