MOZART : ZAIDE

MOZART'S ZAIDE (DAS SERAIL)

Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 9th of December 2007 at 3 pm

INTRODUCTION

LIBRETTO (German)

MOZART: Zaide, an incomplete opera in two acts
Zaide............................ Diana Damrau
Gomatz......................... Michael Schade
Soliman......................... Rudolf Schasching
Allazim.......................... Florian Boesch
Osmin........................... Anton Scharinger
Narrator........................ Tobias Moretti
Concentus Musicus, Vienna/Nikolaus Harnoncourt
(Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 82876 84996)

SYNOPSIS
This incomplete Singspiel (a play with singing) has no overture and no finale. The plot is much the same as in Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The escape from the harem). In Turkey, the Sultan Soliman has European slaves in his seraglio (Das Serail, the alternative title); two of them, Zaide and Gomatz, are in love, but the complication is that Soliman also has his eye on Zaide. The lovers ask their overseer Allazim (who is also a slave) to help them escape, and he eventually agrees to provide a boat for them. In Act 2 the runaways are brought back to face the Sultan's wrath. Allazim is also put in chains, but he tells Soliman that he once saved his life: as the commander of a Venetian ship he rescued Soliman from pirates, but he himself was taken into slavery. Allazim is pardoned immediately, but the Sultan is deaf to his plea for the escapees. And that is where it ends! However, an ending is provided on the recording I have (Orfeo 1983): Allazim inspires Soliman to show compassion, and the Sultan releases them, saying, "not only Europe, but also Asia can produce virtuous souls".
(Let me add that Turkey, ancient Anatolia, Roman Asia Minor, is the original Asia, and the name from which Asia is derived goes back to the Bronze Age and the time of Troy. The 'Middle East' is West Asia, China is in East Asia.)

Notice that the woman in Donizetti's Dom Sébastien had the same Arab name as Zaide, in the form Zayda, but Zaide is supposed to be European!

A new production of Zaide is doing the rounds, directed by the notorious Peter Sellars: he sets it in a modern sweatshop with exploited labourers instead of harem slaves, and fills out the score with music composed by Mozart for another play.

There is a soprano aria (No 3) which is familiar; you may have heard it sung by Kiri Te Kanawa: Ruhe sanft (Rest softly). Zaide sings it as a lullaby to her sleeping lover Gomatz.


I did not put any notes here last week, when the opera was Maria de Buenos Aires, the Argentinian 'tango operita', by Astor Piazzolla, the king of the bandoneon (the you squeeze him and he squeak and squawk box), a kind of accordion. It was an interesting week, hearing his compositions for an hour each morning from Monday to Friday.

It took me back to my boyhood piano lessons with Mrs Bellini in Balmain. All her other pupils learned piano accordion or banjo mandolin.