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
International Commission for the piercing of the isthmus of Suez obtained from Muhammad Sa'id the first concession for a Suez canal and on Lesseps' request, a first draft of the canal was made by Linant-Bey and Mougel-Bey (Linant de Bellefonds and Eugène Mougel), two high level French engineers in the Egyptian canal administration. From the outset, Lesseps' main concern was to put the canal project on a political basis as wide as possible. Thus, in his second, more detailed firman of 19 May 1855, the viceroy ordered to further elaborate the initial draft and to submit it to an international commission of experts for discussion and evaluation. The Commission first