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Subject Area: Music
Topic: Opera and Liberty

Scene I - Giuseppe Verdi, Aida by Antonio Ghislanzoni, music by Giuseppe Verdi [1871]

Edition used:

Aida by Antonio Ghislanzoni, music by Giuseppe Verdi, edited with an introduction by W.J. Henderson (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1911).

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Scene I

A hall in the apartments of Amneris.—Amneris surrounded by slave-girls, who are adorning her for the triumphal feast.—From the tripods perfumed incense is rising.—Moorish slave-boys dance and wave feather-fans.

slaves

  • Ever his name and his praises
  • We’ll raise to the glory on high,
  • That like a divinity blazes,
  • Outshining the sun in the sky,
  • Come, bind in thy glorious tresses,
  • The laurels of victory sweet,
  • Whom triumph and power caresses,
  • And Love lays his song at thy feet.

amneris

  • (Aside.)
  • (Come, my love, my one desire,
  • Fill my heart with rapture sweet.)

slaves

  • Oh! the stranger’s host is shattered,
  • That had ventured Egypt’s might,
  • As doves are by the eagle scattered,
  • Were they driven in the fight.
  • Now, a crown of triumph presses
  • On his brow—for that is meet—
  • Him whom victory caresses
  • Shall caress devotion sweet.

amneris

(Aside.)

  • (Come, my loved one, and revive me
  • With thy accents dear once more!)

Silence! Aïda is coming toward me—a daughter of the conquered race, to me her grief is sacred.

[At a sign from Amneris all the slaves retire.]

Seeing her again, the dreadful doubt awakens in my heart! At last I’ll wrest her fatal secret from her!