This was the first-ever performance in Spain of the opera in the version by Italo Calvino, featuring top-ranking singers such as soprano Anamaria Dell’Oste in the title role and German baritone Stephan Genz as the perfidious Allazim. The youthful tenor Yi Jie Shi, who sung the role of Belmonte in last year’s production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, took the part of Gomatz, whilst baritones Sune Hjerrild, as the Sultan, and César San Martín, as Osmin, completed the cast of soloists.

Zaide was the first Singspiel to be composed by Mozart, who only managed to write fifteen musical numbers before leaving it unfinished. Italo Calvino decided to unite these fragments through the device of a text performed by an actor, on this occasion Helio Pedregal, who plays the role of Narrator, providing a common thread for the opera. Whilst composing Zaide, Mozart received a commission to write Idomeneo, which led him to abandon the opera he was working on. After Mozart’s death his widow sold the score of the fifteen fragments to Johann Anton André, who would not commission Carl Gollmick to complete the opera until well into the 19th century.

In 1981 the then Artistic Director of the “Musica nel chiostro” Festival in Batignano (Tuscany) asked well-known Italian author Italo Calvino to write a text that would lend coherence and unity to the musical fragments composed by Mozart, with Graham Vick as stage director.

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