Heft 01 / Januar 2017

Zusammenfassung:

-

Summary:

»Magnanimous Opera« or Tragic Operetta? On Mozart’s »Fragment« Zaïde – A renewed critical appraisal of the primary and secondary sources offers a new possibility to determine the character and status of Mozart’s Zaïde. The state of the autograph, the work’s genesis and the critical research carried out thus far lead to the hypothesis that the work could be a one-act short opera (»operetta«) with a tragic subject and ending. The previous, widespread view of Mozart’s Zaïde as a multi-act Singspiel with a happy ending is refuted by references to the librettist Schachtner’s borrowings from Voltaire’s tragedy Zaïre and the one-sided fixation of its previous reception on genre stereotypes that did not correspond to Mozart’s intentions. The study places particular emphasis on the role of the melodramas and final quartet.

Résumé: