Zaide

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Work data
Title: The seraglio
Original title: Zaide
Shape: Singspiel
Original language: German
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto : Johann Andreas Schachtner
Premiere: January 27, 1866 (posthumously)
Place of premiere: Frankfurt am Main
Place and time of the action: Turkey, 16th century
people
  • Zaide , European slave of the sultan ( soprano )
  • Gomatz , also a European slave ( tenor )
  • Soliman , Turkish Sultan (tenor)
  • Osmin , slave trader ( bass )
  • Allazim , favorite slave of the Sultan (bass or baritone )

Zaide ( KV 344; 336b) is a German Singspiel fragment in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart based on a lost libretto by Johann Andreas Schachtner . Mozart dedicated this piece to his friend, the theater director Johann Heinrich Böhm .

Die Zaide is a serious forerunner of the cheerful German comedy Die Entführung aus dem Serail, composed two years later, which has been largely ignored for a long time . As in this one, it is also about an - in this case failed - escape from a sultan's palace.

History of origin

As a 23-year-old Mozart was still employed by the Archbishop of Salzburg. It is well known that he was not exactly happy in this employment relationship (he himself referred to it in a letter to his father as "Sclaverey"). Franz von Heufeld , an influential man in the Viennese theater world, advised him to apply for a job at the Viennese court with a comical German opera . But in his life situation at the time, Mozart preferred to write a serious German opera (which was quite daring, after all, during his time in Vienna one only heard serious operas in Italian - as opera seria ).

Suggestions

The following works served as suggestions for the Singspiel:

  • Zaïre (a play with music, text by Voltaire , music by Michael Haydn , performed in Salzburg in 1777; Leopold Mozart wrote several letters about this performance to his son) and
  • The Seraglio or The Unmutethe Gathering in the Sclaverey between Father, Daughter and Son (a Singspiel by Joseph Friebert , text by Franz Joseph Sebastiani, performed in 1777 in Wels, east of Salzburg).

Both pieces have a socially critical plot. It is about slavery, contempt of the "lowly", incomprehension and arbitrariness of the powerful. Since all of this is shown in Turkish colors, the works remained uncensored. Next to it will

  • Adelheid (also: Adelheit) von Veltheim (music: Christian Gottlob Neefe, text: Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Großmann; UA 1781) mentioned by Mozart's widow in her later correspondence with André in connection with the fragment.

Text poetry

The Salzburg court trumpeter Johann Andreas Schachtner , a friend of Leopold Mozart, wrote the libretto for the new Singspiel - presumably he used Sebastiani's text book Das Serail as a model. In 1779 Mozart was able to start work. ( Peter Sellars : "The music vibrates from his glowing conviction of the necessity of social change, from the avant-garde renewal of forms and a deeply moving tenderness.")

Content of the Singspiel

Acting persons

The characters are very reminiscent of the later kidnapping from the seraglio , see the following comparison:

Zaide kidnapping
Zaide Constance
Gomatz Belmonte, Spanish nobleman, Constance's fiance
Soliman Bassa Selim
Osmin Osmin, palace guard
Allazim (no equivalent)

action

Sultan Soliman desires his European slave Zaide, but she only loves her fellow sufferer Gomatz and lays her picture in the lap of the exhausted, asleep slave. Now Gomatz also falls in love with Zaide and all fear falls away from him. He wants to flee with his lover and is supported by Allazim, Soliman's favorite slave, who also decides to bravely take his own fate in hand and go with them.

Osmin, the slave trader, reports to the sultan about the escape of the slaves and is certain that the escaped will not get far. Soliman is furious and insulted vanity that Zaide prefers a slave to him, a "Christian dog" at that, and wants to take cruel revenge. Osmin offers Soliman a beautiful slave as a consolation, but he refuses the offer. The slave trader can only laugh at the ruler's “stupidity”. Trapped again, Zaide furiously rebels against the murderous ruler who wants to shed innocent blood. Allazim denounces the inability of the mighty to recognize their subordinates as "brothers" because they have never experienced the difficult fate of the lowly. Now Allazim, Zaide and Gomatz are trying to change the Sultan's mind. But all pleading for mercy seems in vain.

At this point Mozart broke off the work.

The ending in question

There has been various speculations as to what the end of the plot might have looked like. In the Singspiel Das Serail it turns out that the three slaves are related to each other: Allazim is the father of Gomatz and Zaide. Thereupon the Sultan shows mercy and promises them a safe return journey. There is also the variant that Allazim is recognized by the Sultan as his former life saver and is therefore pardoned together with Gomatz and Zaide.

The further fate of the Singspiel

Long lost

In 1781 Mozart broke off work on his work. He had little influence on Schachtner's text design, about which he was not particularly happy, and also saw that the prospect of being able to perform the work as a serious German Singspiel was rather slim. In a letter to his father he wrote that "[...] we prefer to see comic pieces". Instead, he began to compose the music for The Abduction from the Seraglio . It was commissioned by Emperor Josef II, had a similar subject, but was also provided with very cheerful elements.

The Zaide fragment, on the other hand, was not performed during Mozart's lifetime. Schachtner's libretto has been lost, only the vocal pieces set by Mozart and a few key words at the beginning of the respective musical number have survived. The overture, the spoken text and the ending are missing. In 1838 Johann Anton André added an overture and a finale to his second edition of the opera and had the missing text by Carl Gollmick (to which the title probably also goes back) added. The work was not premiered until 1866 (75 years after Mozart's death!) In Frankfurt am Main under the title Zaide . Incidentally, instead of the Andrés overture, that of the sister work was played. However, the Singspiel could only hold on to a few repertoire and almost completely disappeared from the stages at the beginning of the 20th century. In the last few years, however, Zaide has been increasingly on the repertoire with a wide variety of additions.

additions

In today's performances, instead of the missing overture, one of Mozart's one-movement youth symphonies is usually played (KV 184 or KV 318) and the textbooks of the two Zaide forerunners and Mozart's sparse notes are used to write the spoken text and the final section the found sheet music and various mentions in his letters. The work is also repeatedly performed in concert, mostly with explanatory words between the vocal pieces.

A few years before his death, Italo Calvino wrote a version of the material at the request of Adam Pollock , the musical director of the Batignano Festival, which provides a narrator who connects the traditional fragments. In his version, the narrator also presents several possible courses of action and conclusions for the Singspiel. This arrangement was performed for the first time in 1981 at the festival mentioned.

The Israeli composer Chaya Czernowin wrote the supplement Zaïde / Adama in 2004/2005 .

Vocal pieces

  • Brothers let's be funny (chorus)
  • Unsearchable dispensation (Melolog: Gomatz)
  • Rest gently, my lovely life (Zaide)
  • Rush fate, always rage or yes, now let fate rage (Gomatz)
  • My soul hops for joy (Zaide, Gomatz)
  • Lord and friend, how thank you (Gomatz)
  • Just brave my heart, try your luck (Allazim)
  • O blessed bliss (Zaide, Gomatz, Allazim)
  • Zaide escaped (Melolog: Soliman, Osmin)
  • The proud lion (Soliman)
  • Who sits hungry at the table (Osmin)
  • I'm as bad as good (Soliman)
  • Philomele (Zaide) sobs desolately
  • Tiger! just whip your claws (Zaide)
  • You mighty ones see unmoved (Allazim)
  • Girlfriend! Quiet your tears (quartet: Gomatz, Zaide, Soliman, Allazim)

literature

Sound carrier

Web links

Wikisource: Zaide, Gomatzarie, other text version  - sources and full texts
Commons : Zaide  - collection of images, videos and audio files