A Step Too Far

AMNERIS
It's so strange he doesn't show me
more affection than he needs
Almost formal, too respectful
Never takes romantic leads
There are times when I imagine
I'm not always on his mind
He's not thinking what I'm thinking
Always half a step behind
Always half a step behind
Oh oh... Oh oh... Oh oh...

RADAMES
I'm in every kind of trouble
Can't you tell? Just look at me.
Half ecstatic, half dejected
All in all, I'm all at sea
Easy terms I thought I wanted
fill me now with chilling dread.
You could never know the chaos
of a life turned on its head
Of a life turned on its head
Oh oh...

RADAMES and AMNERIS
Oh oh... Oh oh... Oh oh...

AIDA
I am certain that I love him,
but a love can be misplaced.
Have I compromised my people
in my passion and my haste?
I could be his life companion
anywhere but where we are.
Am I leader? Am I traitor?
Did I take a step too far?
Did I take a step too far?

All three verses overlap

AIDA
Oh oh... Oh oh...

AIDA and RADAMES
Oh oh... Oh oh...

AIDA, RADAMES and AMNERIS
Oh oh... Oh oh...
Oh oh... Oh oh...
Oh oh... Oh oh...
Oh oh... Oh oh...
Oh oh... Oh oh...

Did I take a step too far?

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Easy as Life

AIDA
This is the moment
when the gods expect me to beg for help.
But I won't even try.
I want nothing in the world
but myself to protect me.
And I won't lie down, roll over and die.

All I have to do
is forget how much I love him.
All I have to do
is put my longing to one side.
Tell myself that love's
an ever changing situation.
Passion would have cooled,
and all the magic would have died.
It's easy. It's easy.

All I have to do
is pretend I never knew him
on those very rare occasions
when he steals into my heart.
Better to have lost him
when the ties were barely binding.
Better the contempt
of the familiar cannot start.
It's easy. It's easy.

Until I think about him
as he was when I last touched him
and how he would have been
were I to be with him today
Those very rare occasions
don't let up, they keep on coming.
All I ever wanted,
and I'm throwing it away!
It's easy. It's easy as life.

But then I see the faces
of a worn, defeated people,
a father and a nation
who won't let a coward run.
Is this how the gods
reward the faithful through the ages?
Forcing us to prove
that all the hardest things we've done
are easy, so easy

And though I'll think about him
'til the earth draws in around me,
and though I choose to leave him
for another kind of love,
this is no denial,
no betrayal, but redemption
Redeemed in my own eyes,
and in the pantheon above.
It's easy, it's easy as life.
It's easy as life. It's easy as life!

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Like Father, Like Son

MINISTERS
Like father, like son
Like father, like son

ZOSER
Don't come on so cocksure, boy
You can't escape your genes
No point in feeling pure, boy
Your background intervenes
Listen good and listen straight:
You're not the master of your fate
You'll always be your father's child,
at times acclaimed, at times reviled
You'll wind up doing just what I'd have done
Like father, like son

RADAMES
Don't assume your vices get handed down the line,
that a parent's blood suffices to condemn the child's design
I've done wrong, I can't deny,
but at least I know that I
shouldn't blame that on my stock
This may come as quite a shock,
but I'm no chip off any block!
I wouldn't wish those words on anyone:
Like father, like son!

ZOSER
Son, you're nervous, take my hand
All is settled, all is planned
You've got the world at your command
I don't think you understand

RADAMES
I appreciate too well
the squalor at which you excel
It isn't very hard to tell--
evil's a distinctive smell

ZOSER
He's lost all sense of reason
And why? Some foreign slut
Not only is that treason,
some doors are slamming shut
Just like me, he's found that flesh
can excite, but will enmesh
Once we rid him of this blight
Once that harlot's out of sight
Then I think he'll see the light
He won't walk back to daddy, he will run!
Like father, like son

ZOSER and MINISTERS
Like father, like son
Like father, like son
Like father, like

ZOSER
...son!

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Radames's Letter

RADAMES
I'm sorry for everything I've said
and for anything I forgot to say, too.
When things get so complicated
I stumble, at best muddle through.
I wish that our lives could be simple
I don't want the world, only you.
Oh, I wish I could tell you this face to face
But there's never the time, never the place
So this letter will have to do.
I love you.


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How I Know You (Reprise)

MEREB
There is a time, there is a place
when love should conquer all
The rest of life is pushed aside
as truth and reason fall
But only if that selfishness
can lead to something good
I thought I knew you, Princess,
but I never understood
I don't know you
I don't know you

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Written in the Stars

AIDA
I am here to tell you we can never meet again
Simple really, isn't it? A word or two and then
a lifetime of not knowing where or how or why or when
You think of me, or speak of me, and wonder what befell
the someone you once loved so long ago, so well

RADAMES
Never wonder what I'll feel as living shuffles by
You don't have to ask me, and I need not reply
Every moment of my life, from now until I die
I will think or dream of you, and fail to understand
how a perfect love can be confounded out of hand.

Is it written in the stars?
Are we paying for some crime?
Is that all that we are good for,
just a stretch of mortal time?
Or some god's experiment
in which we have no say?
In which we're given paradise,
but only for a day?

AIDA
Nothing can be altered, there is nothing to decide
No escape, no change of heart, nor any place to hide.

RADAMES
You are all I'll ever want, but this I am denied.
Sometimes in my darkest thoughts, I wish I'd never learned

RADAMES and AIDA
What it is to be in love, and have that love returned

AIDA
Is it written in the stars?
Are we paying for some crime?
Is that all that we are good for,
just a stretch of mortal time?

RADAMES and AIDA
Or some god's experiment
in which we have no say?
In which we're given paradise,
but only for a day?

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I Know the Truth

AMNERIS
How have I come to this?
How did I slip and fall?
How did I throw half a lifetime away
without any thought at all?

This should have been my time;
it's over, it never began
I closed my eyes to so much for so long,
and I no longer can

I try to blame it on fortune,
some kind of shift in a star
but I know the truth, and it haunts me
It's flown just a little too far
I know the truth, and it mocks me
I know the truth, and it shocks me
It's flown just a little too far.

Why do I want him still?
Why, when there's nothing there?
How to go on with the rest of my life?
To pretend I don't care?

This should have been my time;
it's over, it never began
I closed my eyes to so much for so long,
and I no longer can.

I try to blame it on fortune,
some kind of twist in my fate,
but I know the truth, and it haunts me
I learned it a little too late.
I know the truth, and it mocks me
I know the truth, and it shocks me
I learned it a little too late.
Too late.

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Elaborate Lives (Reprise)

AIDA
We all lead such elaborate lives
Wild ambitions in our sights
How an affair of the heart survives
days apart and hurried nights
seems quite unbelievable to me
I don't want to live like that.
Seems quite unbelievable to me
I don't want to love like that.
I just want our time to be
slower and gentler, wiser, free.

We all live in extravagant times
playing games we can't all win.
Unintended emotional crimes
take some out, take others in.
Too many choices tear us apart
I don't want to live like that.
Too many choices tear us apart
I don't want to love like that.
I just want to keep your heart.
May this confession be the start.

I know you'll give me courage
to face what I must face
with all these complications
in another time and place

AIDA and RADAMES
We all lead such elaborate lives
We don't know whose words are true
An affair of the heart survives
all the pain the world can do

RADAMES
I'm so tired of all we're going through
I don't want to live like that.

AIDA
I'm so tired of all we're going through
I don't want to love like that.
I just want to be with you
now and forever, peaceful, true.

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Enchantment Passing Through (Reprise)

RADAMES
There'll be no ties of time and space to bind us

AIDA
And no horizon we shall not pursue

RADAMES and AIDA
We'll leave the world's misfortunes far behind us
And I will put my faith and trust in you.

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Every Story is a Love Story (Reprise)

AMNERIS
From deep within a tomb, a gentle light still shone
Showing me my path as I ascended to the throne
Certain in my heart that ancient wars must cease
The lovers' deaths gave birth to a reign of peace.

And their story, and my journey
and the lesson they provide
draw their strength and inspiration
from a love that never dies.

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