Erroneously regarded as a mere trial run for Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart's unfinished opera Zaide is, in the words of musicologist Neal Zaslaw, "a masterpiece-in-the-making truncated by circumstances." The opera has its genesis in Emperor Joseph II's desire to found a German opera company in Vienna—a city dominated at the time by Italian opera. Early in 1778, Mozart, on his way home from the tour of Germany and Paris, asked his father Leopold to make inquiries about the possibility of a post in the new company. The response was not encouraging, Mozart being advised only to submit a comic opera for consideration. His reaction was one of anger, pointing out that he could not be expected to compose without guarantee of performance, and that he wanted to compose a serious, not comic opera. Nevertheless, after he arrived home in Salzburg in mid-January 1779, Mozart did start work on Zaide, working with the Salzburg court musician Johann Schachtner as librettist. The subject matter was "Turkish," a popular exotic touch in both musical and dramatic works of the period. The intervention of firm commitments dictated that work on Zaide progressed slowly; the commissioned to compose Idomeneo for Munich in particular proved a major distraction. But it was not until after returning from Munich that Mozart finally abandoned Zaide. Writing to his father shortly before his dismissal from the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg, Mozart made clear his regret that the opera was abandoned in favor of a comic opera, Die Entführung. "The work," he writes, "was very good, but simply not right for Vienna, where they would rather watch comedies."

The surviving musical torso shows that posterity was robbed of a unique treasure in Mozart's output. Although the plot has similarities with that of Die Entführung, the 15 numbers of the opera Mozart completed show him working on a very different type of score—music that has as many analogies with the serious Idomeneo as it does with the comic Die Entführung. In particular, the music for the heroine Zaide and her beloved Gomatz is suffused with a romantic warmth, much of it evocative of a nocturnally perfumed Eastern garden. Such a mood is typified by the fragrant delicacy of Zaide's Act I aria "Ruhe sanft," one of the most beguiling Mozart ever composed. The score is also remarkable for including Mozart's only dramatic use of melodrama—spoken word superimposed over orchestral music. Mozart had been impressed with the idea when he saw Georg Benda's melodrama Medea in Mannheim. He included two melodrama numbers in Zaide, the long stretch for Gomatz in Act I providing a good example of how dramatically effective it can be in the hands of a great composer.

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.