Aida - tremendous performance and sound. So far, I like this better than Traviata.
I am not surprised. Verdi, like Picasso in art, went through periods of composition growth.
La Traviata, Il Trovatore, and
Rigoletto were early successes, and they pretty much follow the established Rossini-Donizetti-Bellini pattern of numbers and accompanied recitative, By the time of
Aïda, relatively late in his career, he had moved past that style - probably due in part to Wagner and other composers (he saw and heard everything in Italy and France that he could) - to operas in which the connections between numbers and recitative are way less blatant.
Aïda was composed along the "grand opera" lines established by the Paris Grand Opera, with ballets, and I believe it was his experience composing other French operas (
Don Carlos,
Les Vêpres Siciliennes, and adapting and revising
Macbeth by adding a ballet) that makes
Aïda the greatest grand opera.
