Giuseppe Verdi Verdi and Giuseppina decided to adopt Carlo's great-niece Filomena Maria Verdi, then seven years old, as their own child. She was to marry in 1878 the son of Verdi's friend and lawyer Angelo Carrara and her family became eventually the heirs of Verdi's estate. "Aida" was commissioned by the Egyptian government for the opera house built by the Khedive Isma'il Pasha to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The opera house actually opened with a production of "Rigoletto". The prose libretto in French by Camille du Locle, based on a scenario by the Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, was
Raid on the Suez Canal two additional divisions. A further division would be available to reinforce the bridgehead on the west bank of the Suez Canal. The Ottoman Empire constructed a branch railway line from the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway at Ramleh running south to reach Sileh about from the Suez Canal during the autumn of 1914. The stretch of the railway to Beersheba was opened on 17 October 1915. By May 1916 it had been extended on to Hafir El Auja then south across the Egyptian frontier, to almost reached the Wadi el Arish in December 1916 when the Battle of Magdhaba was fought. German engineers