Italian Egyptians which was to be inaugurated in 1871 with the "Aida" by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The Khedivial Opera House or "Cairo Royal Opera House" was the original Opera House in Cairo. It was inaugurated on November 1869 and burned down on October 1971. The opera house was built on the orders of the Khedive Ismail to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal. The Italian Egyptian architects Pietro Avoscani and Mario Rossi designed the building. Pietro Avoscani, before his 1891 death in Alexandria, created even the famous "Corniche" of Alexandria. The fondness of Egyptian monarchs towards Italy appeared in
Suez Crisis to prefer to use the sea route through the Suez Canal. As it was, the rise of super-tankers for shipping Middle East oil to Europe, which were too big to use the Suez Canal meant that British policy-makers greatly overestimated the importance of the canal. By 2000, only 8 percent of the imported oil in Britain arrived via the Suez canal with the rest coming via the Cape route. In August 1956 the Royal Institute of International Affairs published a report titled "Britain and the Suez Canal" revealing government perception of the Suez area. It reiterates several times the strategic