Music: Turkel Over Pashas

The audience which gathered at the Royal Opera House in Cairo one night last week had the feeling that nothing which happened on the stage would be any more exciting than the sight of Prime Minister Ismail Sidky Pasha sitting in his box glowering at Former Prime Minister Mustafa Nahas Pasha, his bitterest political enemy, in a box just opposite. The opera was AÏda, a particularly old story for Cairo. Years ago, Khedive Ismail Pasha, swollen over the success of the new Suez Canal, had commissioned Verdi to write it for the opening of that same opera house. The tunes, familiar...

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