Plots: Aida: Forbidden love affair between Radames, an Egyptian soldier, and Aida, an enslaved Nubian princess.

Built in 1922, the Art Deco structure holds a riot of Oriental carpets, urns, mounted rifles, statues of Nubian princesses and other riches.

Playing a Nubian princess in captivity, Ms. Headley has fire, self-possession and an uncompromising sense of purpose.

Ms. Headley, who last worked as a Disney employee wearing zoological drag in "The Lion King," here sheds fur and claws to assume a woman's part, that of the title role of the Nubian princess in captivity.

As a child, she explains, she once dressed up as a Nubian princess for Halloween, and when the school principal awarded her the prize for best costume, he described her outfit as "Aunt Jemima."

The latter features a Nubian princess who survives her parents' murder, and attempts to regain her throne with the assistance of the dragon Hathor.

Ms. Headley is now front and center, singing to the rafters of the Palace Theater in the Elton John version of Verdi's tragic romance about a Nubian princess and her Egyptian captor.

Mr. Pascal plays Radames, the commander of the Egyptian Army, who is engaged to Amneris, an Egyptian princess (Sherie Rene Scott), but falls in love, fatally it turns out, with Aida (Heather Headley), a Nubian princess captured and enslaved by the Egyptians.