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Updated: May 28, 2025
Amneris lavishes words of sympathy upon her, and succeeds in making her betray her love for Radames by saying that he had been killed in battle. Then she confesses the falsehood and proclaims her own passion and purpose to crush her rival, who shall appear at the triumph of Radames as her slave.
Amneris, crouched without, hears the accusing voices of the priests and the awful silence which follows each accusation; for Radames refuses to answer the charges. The priests pronounce sentence: Burial alive! Amneris hurls curses after them, but they depart, muttering, "Death to the traitor!"
Aida, the daughter of Amonasro, the King of Ethiopia, has been taken prisoner by the Egyptians, and given as a slave to the princess Amneris. They both love the warrior Radames, the chosen chief of the Egyptian army, but he cares nothing for Amneris, and she vows a deadly vengeance against the slave who has supplanted her.
A master of drama would begin in the third act, reveal the whole past in a pregnant five minutes, and then hold us breathless while we watched to see whether Radames would yield to social pressure, marry Amneris, and throw over Aïda, or yield to passion, fly with Aïda, and throw over his country.
She affects to repulse him because of his betrothal to Amneris, but he protests his fidelity and discloses his plan. The Ethiopians are in revolt again. Again he will defeat them, and, returning again in triumph, he will tell the King of his love for her and thereafter live in the walks of peace. But Aida tells him that the vengeance of Amneris will pursue her, and urges him to fly with her.
But now, when local colour has been done to death, and when it has had a quarter of a century to bleach out of Verdi's canvases, what remains to interest, I do not say to touch, one? That Verdi has no well-spring of original feeling, perhaps explains why he is so poor in the scenes with Radames, Amneris, and Aïda.
But on the whole "Aïda" is to be heard once and have done with, for save these scenes there is little else in it to engage one. Aïda is alive, but Amneris is a hopeless piece of machinery something between the stage conception of a princess and the Lady with the Camellias, any difference in modesty being certainly not in favour of Amneris.
The latter agrees to release all but Aida and Amonasro, bestows the hand of Amneris upon the unwilling conqueror, and the act closes amid general jubilation. Acting upon Amonasro's admonitions, Aida influences Rhadames to fly from Egypt and espouse the cause of her father. The lovers are overheard by Amneris and Ramfis, the high priest.
The second act opens with a scene between Amneris and Aida, in which the Princess wrests the secret from the slave by pretending that Rhadames has been killed; and the truth is still further revealed when Rhadames pleads with the King to spare the lives of the captives.
Who wants to see that Radames loves Aïda, that Amneris, the king's daughter, loves Radames, that Aïda, a slave, is the daughter of the King of the Ethiopians, that Radames goes on a war expedition against that king, beats him and fetches him back a prisoner, that the other king gives Radames his daughter in marriage, that Radames, highly honoured, yet wishes to goodness he could get out of it somehow?
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