Giuseppe Verdi, 1813-1901, was an Italian composer of some of the most well-known and often-performed operas in the western tradition. A brilliant child of an impoverished family, Verdi nonetheless managed at an early age to associate himself with the prestigious La Scala opera house in Milan, the musical center of Italy at the time, where he got much training in the writing of opera as well as its management. Curiously enough, both Verdi and Richard Wagner were born in the same year, though the two forged very different musical paths. Verdi came on the scene just after the tradition of the “bel canto” operas of Donizetti, Rossini, and others; in his works Verdi carefully created plausible dramatic moments without sacrificing the primacy of the voice.

Verdi’s early adult years were marked by personal tragedy:  his wife and two children died when the composer was in his 20s. Some say that these difficulties—in addition to his remarkable stamina and compulsive work ethic—led to his first great opera, Nabucco (the biblical story of King Nebuchadrezzar II) in 1841. In succeeding years, Verdi’s corpus included Rigoletto (1851), La traviata (1853), Il trovatore (1853), and the 1871 work which features tonight’s music, Aïda.

In the opera, Aïda, an Ethiopian princess is taken hostage by the Egyptian army. While in captivity, she falls in love with an Egyptian general Radamès (which will inflame the jealousy of his Egyptian lover Amneris while it conflicts with her longing for her homeland). Radamès has been successful in battle, and the second scene of Act II opens with a grand triumphal march, an occasion for much pomp and pageantry, typical of the grand operas of the 18^th century. The work had been commissioned by an Egyptian dignitary in 1869 in order to inaugurate Cairo’s new opera house. Even today the “Triumphal March” can be regularly heard at graduation ceremonies in the Philippines.