# What if Wagner or Gounod had composed AIda?



## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

The Khedive commissioned Verdi to compose _Aida_ - but he also considered Gounod and Wagner. What would _Aida_ by those two composers have been like? Discuss.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Gounod's Aida might have been more of a love story, and we wouldn't have had to wait till we were buried alive to hear a nice romantic duet. I can also imagine the heroine singing a picturesque faux-African slave song as she makes bricks out of mud and straw. It's curious, though, that with its spectacle and ballet, Verdi's piece is already more or less a French opera - as close as he ever got to Meyerbeer.

Wagner would have wanted nothing to do with the whole idea.


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## AlexD (Nov 6, 2011)

What a delightful question. 

If Wagner had gone for it, I imagine he would have could up with something a bit more gothic & ghostly. 

Maybe he'd intertwine the story with Egyptian myths & legends. So we'd probably start with Ra crossing the Nile in a boat at the beginning, and then returning in the opposite direction at the end. Probably a love story where the lovers drown as the Nile floods in the end as the gods, or celestial universe exerts its unchanging will upon humanity and the landscape. One lover is probably tied up to drown in the Nile, and the other goes to save them - but both tire, give into fate and drown singing some song about undying love whilst the uncaring god sails off into the sunset.


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## david johnson (Jun 25, 2007)

Wagner would put it in German.


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