Aida and three millennia of Egyptian-Ethiopian conflict

Faithful readers will recall that I was flabbergasted by the astonishing way in which current events in Chile dovetailed with Virginia Opera's production of Daniel Catán's Il Postino. I still can't get over that news headlines were reporting protest demonstrations and violence in Santiago even as the curtain went up on an opera depicting Chilean protest demonstrations and violence. Life imitated Art, as I noted in this post.

Author: Lourdes Cardenal
Used via the GNU Free Documentation License,

And now it's happening again with Verdi's Aida.

Most of us who learned Bible stories as kids likely frame Egyptian wars in terms of Israel. Moses in the bulrushes, "Let my people go", the plagues, and the parting of the Red Sea. Tensions between the two nations continued up to the Camp David accords of 1978. This was followed by a peace treaty that resulted in Anwar Sadat and Menahem Begin sharing the Nobel Peace Prize.

But, as Aida reminds us, Egypt's history of violent conflict with Ethiopia also extends back centuries before Christ. The difference?

Egypt and Ethiopia are on the brink of war even today, even as I write this.

To give Aida some helpful context, lets' examine relations between the two nations during three different eras.

1000 B.C.
This, more or less, is the period during which the doomed events of Verdi's masterpiece play out. War between Egypt and Ethiopia was continual, if not continuous. Today the two nations are separated by Sudan and Eritrea; in ancient times this buffer zone was known as Nubia, home to various empires such as the Kingdom of Kush which fought its own battles with Egypt in the 8th century B.C.

It seems that among the various gods worshipped by each country, they shared one in common known as Amon or Amun. In Egypt, Amun eventually became associated with the sun god Ra, called Amun-Ra. The cult of this god spread outside Egypt to Libya, Nubia and Ethiopia.

Interestingly, important people were sometimes given names acknowledging Amun; we observe this in Verdi's Aida where the Ehiopian king is Amonasro and the Pharaoh's daughter is Amneris. Common deities, however, did not prevent the back-and-forth of bloody battles.

The 19th Century
Egyptian-Ethiopian wars of the 1870's were partly a result of the decline of the Ottoman Empire. As the Khedive of Egypt broke away from Ottoman rule, he formulated ambitious plans: the incorporation of Sudan and Ethiopia into a new and powerful African Empire under his control. The Khedive was educated in France; as a result, his outlook was very pro-European and cosmopolitan (this helps to explain why he wished the Italian Verdi to create a French-style grand opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal).

So, in order to train his troops to the proper battle-ready standard, he recruited military men from all over the globe, including - ready for this? - American veterans from the American Civil War! Other military personnel came from Great Britain and Switzerland. These various experts were sent to Ethiopia to oversee two important battles: the Battle of Gundet in 1876 and the Battle of Gura the following year.

Despite the Khedive's planning and utilization of international assistance, both battles ended in victory for Ethiopia, with catastrophic loss of life and armaments for Egypt. It was a demoralizing loss; reports from the front mention panic on the part of Egyptian troops, abandoning their weapons and fellow soldiers in cowardice as enemy troops advanced.

TODAY
For the second time in one opera season, real life is mirroring the fictional events in a music drama. As recently as October 2019, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Egypt and Ethiopia engineering peace negotiations with Eritrea. Well and good, but the fact is that his country and Egypt are on the brink of war, enmeshed in a hotly-contested dispute over the allocation of water from the Nile.

The Nile River has always been central to the survival of those countries through which it makes its northward journey. The past ninety years have seen three milestones in the regulation of water distribution. Great Britain brokered the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, an agreement cementing Egypt's share of this resource. Thirty years later Egypt's allocation was increased in a revised treaty.

But Ethiopia has thrown a wrench into the arrangements for water rights. In 2011 Ethiopia began construction on a gigantic project: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This involves a major tributary of the Nile known as the Blue Nile (see map above). The source of the Blue Nile is Ethiopia's Lake Tana which merges with the "White Nile" at Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.

The dam will improve Ethiopia's infrasturcture by providing much-needed electricity. There are massive objections on the part of Egypt, mainly based on these areas:

• The dam will feature a new reservoir projected to contain 67 billion cubic meters of water;
• It will take seven years to fill the reservoir to capacity;
• During this seven-year period, the flow of water to Egypt will be reduced by 25%; and finally,
• 90% of Egypt's drinking water comes from the Nile.

Right now, the dam construction represents the irrisistible force to Egypt's immovable object. Both sides refuse to give an inch. There have been at least two attempts at mediation, one set of talks overseen by Russia and another by the United States.

No progress.

It is said that any possible peaceful resolution will require the water ministers of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia to work with South Africa. If there is no resolution, Northeastern Africa may become a powder keg of possible regional war posing a grave threat to global stability.

And all this is playing out as the curtain rises on our production of an opera about war between these very nations. The shades of Amonasro and Radames are hovering restlessly over the banks of the Nile right now.

This is why I roll my eyes when modern critics complain that classic operas "are no longer relevant". 

Really? 

Count me as among the die-hards who believe that it's impossible for art to be irrelevant.