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 when the decision was made that "the obvious line of actual defence of the eastern frontier of Egypt is the Suez Canal." The long canal had a railway running along its whole length and was supplied with water from the west, while only brackish wells were to the east. The length of the canal included about of the Great and Little Bitter Lakes and Lake Timsah, which divided the three sectors organised for the defence. These were, The northern stretch of the canal was shortened by by cutting the Canal bank at Port Said on 25 November to flood a