The Theater: New Musical in Manhattan, Nov. 10, 1952

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My Darlin' Aida (music by Giuseppe Verdi; book & lyrics by Charles Friedman) shifts its scene from the Memphis, Egypt of Aida to Memphis, Tenn. in 1861. Aida, Amneris and Radames of Verdi's opera become respectively a lovely slave girl (Elaine Malbin), her imperious young mistress (Dorothy Sarnoff) and a Confederate officer (Howard Jarratt) who loves the slave girl but is engaged to her mistress. The story is a tangle of Negro uprisings, hooded night riders, beatings, and death for the lovers.

The result, though not dull, is fairly distressing. No opera better lends itself to spectacle than Aida, and thanks to Lemuel Ayers' opulent sets and costumes and a $250,000 outlay in non-Confederate money, My Darlin' Aida is often bright spectacle enough. As for the story, its bloodhound violences have more bang than the opera's rather bloodless grandiosities; but My Darlin' Aida is a mass of strident cliches, puerile dialogue and hack vulgarities. As for the score, though its glories remain, they are dented and tarnished by embarrassing lyrics, new bits of orchestration, and musicomedy voices.

In undertaking My Darlin' Aida, Librettist Friedman was frankly inspired by the success of Carmen Jones. But there are great differences, not just between him and the much defter Oscar Hammerstein II, but between the parent operas themselves. Carmen has a vivid, earthy, human story; Aida's is unreal and faraway. Carmen, again, has the theater blood of the opera comique; Aida possesses both the stiffness and the elevation of truly grand opera. Where many operas—La Traviata, Tosca, La Boheme—might be at home on Broadway, not only must the story of Aida be revamped; the finer values of the music must be half destroyed.