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 a line of communication and also the site for a military base as the well equipped ports at Alexandria and Port Said made the region particularly useful. However, the popularity of the British was in decline in Egypt as the people disliked the occupation and the imposition of a foreign country and alien religion in control of their country. The Convention of Constantinople of 1888 by the European Powers guaranteed freedom of navigation of the Suez Canal. In August 1914 Egypt was defended by 5,000 men in the Force in Egypt. Abbas Hilmi, the reigning Khedive, who had opposed the