Aida in Full Score (Dover Music Scores)

You want orchestral color and an exotic setting for your grand opera? Nothing says it better than Aida, which is, in the grand operatic manner, a tragic tale of love and war with a nifty death scene at the end. Few moments in opera can touch the Triumphal Scene for sheer bombast, but sometimes bombast is a lot of fun. Verdi's use of brass here is instructive; with the full score, you can see exactly what is called for. Full scores are always more fun for armchair conducting, but they're not as useful for working singers who just need the vocal lines and piano accompaniment. Dover Scores, being reprints of out-of-copyright editions from other publishers, sometimes contain errors that have been corrected in more recent versions, but they're still the biggest bargain going in printed music.