How do duty and passion intertwine in Aida? Radames’s solemn duty is to conquer the invading Ethiopians, though it entails destroying Amonasro, Aida’s father; Aida chastises herself for wishing to see Radames return to Egypt triumphant, recognizing that her lover’s victory is predicated on her father and her country’s destruction. Aida may fufill her duty to become queen of Ethiopia – queen of its “green hills and perfumed shores” – or be first in Radames’s heart, but not both; Radames may become king of Egypt or first in Aida’s heart, but not both. Aida’s liberation from Egyptian bondage, ascension to the Ethiopian throne, and the survival of her people rest on Radames’s failure, even his death; the fulfillment of Radames’s duty ensures a “prize” of marriage to the Egyptian princess Amneris upon the annihilation of Aida’s people – both of which would destroy Aida’s heart.
Will love of country (or is it duty toward country?), or Radames’s love, hold sway? “For the one, for the other,” cries Aida, “confused, trembling…my prayer changes to a curse.” Radames’s love renders Aida’s life as a slave worth living. And yet, as her rival for Radames’s affection, the Egyptian princess Amneris, notes, “this love can mean your death.”
Under pain of disinheritance, and the threat that her country’s fate rests in her hands, Aida agrees to elicit from Radames the Egyptians’ battle plan, as Amonasro listens in hiding. Aida’s sense of duty (or is it love?) leads to Radames’s unintentional betrayal of his duty and his country, as well as his demise – and Aida’s.
The force of destiny is at work, as Amonasro explains to a distraught Radames: Love, as Verdi’s audience well knows, will have it no other way. Indeed, Radames’s answer to the high priests’ indictment of treachery is silence; he will not allow Amneris to intercede; his fate is clear. (Just so, Tristan can provide no answer to King Marke, in Tristan und Isolde, when asked to account for his deceit; the innermost workings of love are beyond the conventions of mere speech, and pleadings will not alter the inexorable workings of fate.) Not surprisingly, Amneris, the embodiment of duty and conventional love (had Ramades married her, their love would have been the most conventional love of all), cannot persuade the dutiful high priests to spare Radames’s life. Radames’s life is one of destiny, not choice, much as Aida’s “choice” to join him in death is no choice at all, but mandated by her eternal love.
Aida, wishing to flee with Radames, sings of “virgin forests, perfumed with flowers,” where “in blissful ecstasy we shall forget the world.” But Aida and Radames’s love can be attained only by renouncing the world through death, slipping from the mortal coil of a realm whose politics and prejudice – the “harsh passions of [Egypt’s] barren plains” – impede their love.
As Tristan betrays King Marke, so Radames is a traitor – unintentionally – for love. Prior to “betraying” Egypt by spilling its battle plans, Radames expresses his naïve dream of returning triumphant to Egypt, whereupon the king will grant him his wish of marrying Aida: “We shall live blessed by eternal love.” But Radames’s final allegiance to a love beyond the mere conventions of this world was always beyond doubt; such love, like Tristan and Isolde’s, is always antinomian. Though Amneris offers Radames “country, throne and life” in exchange for his love, power cannot purchase it. Radames forsakes this-worldly power for a love that will never submit to entombment, and Amneris’s “beloved corpse” is its tragic result. Hence power – even civilization itself – is finally incompatible with love, as it is in a plethora of operatic visions, whether we speak of Egypt and Valhalla; Aida and Radames; Freia and Alberich; or Tristan and Isolde. In the clash between civilization and its discontents, civilization wins on its own terms; but its discontents become whole – and discover their true selves – via “easeful death.”
Egypt metes out its justice as Aida submits to entombment with Radames (Act IV, Scene 2) because she “wishes to die in [his] arms.” Her words match music of supreme resignation and gentleness: “Already I see heaven open – there all torments cease and begins the ecstasy of an eternal love.” The light of day, and the false, worldly values it represents, which so tormented Tristan, will also be Radames’s undoing. Only in the suffocating darkness of an Egyptian tomb or under the star-spangled sky of Brittany may the love of an Egyptian for an Ethiopian – and a married Irish princess for the noblest of Breton knights – find fulfillment.
In Tristan, the emancipation of love parallels what Schoenberg calls Wagner’s “emancipation of dissonance.” Only on the final chord of Tristan is the opera’s musical discord – the “Tristan chord” which elicits a yearning for resolution in listeners – resolved. And only upon that resolution are Tristan and Isolde united forever in love, in the noumenal domain of night and death. In perhaps the most beautiful “love duet” ever to ravish our ears, both sing rapturously as the cover of night gives way to what Isolde calls the “lies [of] evil day”: “Let day yield to death… grant oblivion that I may live…release me from the world.” Here Wagner’s conception of the unity death provides far surpasses his treatment of the theme in Tannhäuser and Der Fliegende Hollander. Like Radames, Tristan knows, in his words, that “the day’s illusions – fame and honor, power and profit – have the glitter of mere dust in the sunlight into which it disperses.” The domain of dreams becomes the empire of true reality: Beyond the illusion of day lies the oceanic realm of night and death, in which the lovers will be united – nameless and eternally one. In its sense of spiritual release, Isolde’s ec
static Liebestod (“love-death”), which concludes the opera, is matched only by the final bars of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.
Six years were to pass between the first performance of Aida and the four-hour love song which is Tristan und Isolde, but the lovers’ deaths in both operas – in Aida and Radames’s case, “beneath the sky that first witnessed our love” – ensure that eternally they will remain “in love with night / and pay no worship to the garish sun.” Only in death may their duties to each other become their love fulfilled.
Will love of country (or is it duty toward country?), or Radames’s love, hold sway? “For the one, for the other,” cries Aida, “confused, trembling…my prayer changes to a curse.” Radames’s love renders Aida’s life as a slave worth living. And yet, as her rival for Radames’s affection, the Egyptian princess Amneris, notes, “this love can mean your death.”
Under pain of disinheritance, and the threat that her country’s fate rests in her hands, Aida agrees to elicit from Radames the Egyptians’ battle plan, as Amonasro listens in hiding. Aida’s sense of duty (or is it love?) leads to Radames’s unintentional betrayal of his duty and his country, as well as his demise – and Aida’s.
The force of destiny is at work, as Amonasro explains to a distraught Radames: Love, as Verdi’s audience well knows, will have it no other way. Indeed, Radames’s answer to the high priests’ indictment of treachery is silence; he will not allow Amneris to intercede; his fate is clear. (Just so, Tristan can provide no answer to King Marke, in Tristan und Isolde, when asked to account for his deceit; the innermost workings of love are beyond the conventions of mere speech, and pleadings will not alter the inexorable workings of fate.) Not surprisingly, Amneris, the embodiment of duty and conventional love (had Ramades married her, their love would have been the most conventional love of all), cannot persuade the dutiful high priests to spare Radames’s life. Radames’s life is one of destiny, not choice, much as Aida’s “choice” to join him in death is no choice at all, but mandated by her eternal love.
Aida, wishing to flee with Radames, sings of “virgin forests, perfumed with flowers,” where “in blissful ecstasy we shall forget the world.” But Aida and Radames’s love can be attained only by renouncing the world through death, slipping from the mortal coil of a realm whose politics and prejudice – the “harsh passions of [Egypt’s] barren plains” – impede their love.
As Tristan betrays King Marke, so Radames is a traitor – unintentionally – for love. Prior to “betraying” Egypt by spilling its battle plans, Radames expresses his naïve dream of returning triumphant to Egypt, whereupon the king will grant him his wish of marrying Aida: “We shall live blessed by eternal love.” But Radames’s final allegiance to a love beyond the mere conventions of this world was always beyond doubt; such love, like Tristan and Isolde’s, is always antinomian. Though Amneris offers Radames “country, throne and life” in exchange for his love, power cannot purchase it. Radames forsakes this-worldly power for a love that will never submit to entombment, and Amneris’s “beloved corpse” is its tragic result. Hence power – even civilization itself – is finally incompatible with love, as it is in a plethora of operatic visions, whether we speak of Egypt and Valhalla; Aida and Radames; Freia and Alberich; or Tristan and Isolde. In the clash between civilization and its discontents, civilization wins on its own terms; but its discontents become whole – and discover their true selves – via “easeful death.”
Egypt metes out its justice as Aida submits to entombment with Radames (Act IV, Scene 2) because she “wishes to die in [his] arms.” Her words match music of supreme resignation and gentleness: “Already I see heaven open – there all torments cease and begins the ecstasy of an eternal love.” The light of day, and the false, worldly values it represents, which so tormented Tristan, will also be Radames’s undoing. Only in the suffocating darkness of an Egyptian tomb or under the star-spangled sky of Brittany may the love of an Egyptian for an Ethiopian – and a married Irish princess for the noblest of Breton knights – find fulfillment.
In Tristan, the emancipation of love parallels what Schoenberg calls Wagner’s “emancipation of dissonance.” Only on the final chord of Tristan is the opera’s musical discord – the “Tristan chord” which elicits a yearning for resolution in listeners – resolved. And only upon that resolution are Tristan and Isolde united forever in love, in the noumenal domain of night and death. In perhaps the most beautiful “love duet” ever to ravish our ears, both sing rapturously as the cover of night gives way to what Isolde calls the “lies [of] evil day”: “Let day yield to death… grant oblivion that I may live…release me from the world.” Here Wagner’s conception of the unity death provides far surpasses his treatment of the theme in Tannhäuser and Der Fliegende Hollander. Like Radames, Tristan knows, in his words, that “the day’s illusions – fame and honor, power and profit – have the glitter of mere dust in the sunlight into which it disperses.” The domain of dreams becomes the empire of true reality: Beyond the illusion of day lies the oceanic realm of night and death, in which the lovers will be united – nameless and eternally one. In its sense of spiritual release, Isolde’s ec
static Liebestod (“love-death”), which concludes the opera, is matched only by the final bars of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde.Six years were to pass between the first performance of Aida and the four-hour love song which is Tristan und Isolde, but the lovers’ deaths in both operas – in Aida and Radames’s case, “beneath the sky that first witnessed our love” – ensure that eternally they will remain “in love with night / and pay no worship to the garish sun.” Only in death may their duties to each other become their love fulfilled.
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