"Zaide" Gets a New Twist, But Questions Persist

(first published in The Cincinnati Post Feb. 14, 1992)

Mozart's unfinished opera "Zaide" poses a dilemma for its interpreters.

How to end it, primarily, since Mozart left Zaide and her lover begging for mercy at the sultan's feet. There are also the spoken dialogues (missing) and a lack of dramatic development in the music itself.

The opera department of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music has come up with some ingenious solutions to these problems in its new production of "Zaide," which opened Thursday at Patricia Corbett Theater. Whether they will please everyone, especially those who wish to hear just an opera, is another question.

Director Malcolm Fraser has enlisted British playwright John Mortimer to give "Zaide" a dramatic context. The opera transpires within a play, which is about a hostage in a Middle-Eastern country. This echoes "Zaide" itself, which is also about a captive situation.

Each character in the play has an alter ego in the opera, which has become a dream fantasy of the hostage. Mortimer has written new dialogues for the opera, which allow even more cross-cutting between the two plots.

Mortimer's solution to the ultimate question, do the prisoners live or die, itself raises a question: If the characters mirror one another, why does the play end one way and the opera another?

Mortimer has described opera as expressing "people's unspoken thoughts." Sultan Soliman acts on his feelings while the Qadhafi-like Rashid does not?

Among the cast of CCM voice and drama students, Philip Solomon was a fanatical Rashid, with David Schaplowsky and Alice Porte an intensely defiant prisoner and girl.

Tenor Michael Hendrick was sterling as Soliman, as was baritone Randall Gremillion as Allazim.

Soprano Kristin Clayton as Zaide had problems with diction and some weakness on her high notes.

ZAIDE. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Thursday night, Patricia Corbett Theater. Translation and adaptation by John Mortimer. Malcolm Fraser, director. Gerhard Samuel, conductor. Sets, Thomas Umfrid. Costumes, Dean Mogle. Lighting, John Gage. Makeup, wigs, Lenna Kaleva. Soundscape, Gerhard Samuel. CAST: (Singers) Michael Hendrick, Soliman. Randall Gremillion, Allazim. John Wesley Wright, Gomatz. Kristin Clayton, Zaide. Samuel Smith, Osmin. (Actors) Rashid, Philip Solomon. Politician, Eric Weisheit. Prisoner, David Schaplowsky. Girl, Alice Porte. Bodyguard, Martin Funk. Lieutenant, Gary Anaple. Repeats (alternate casts): Tonight, Saturday, 8 p.m. Saturday, Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Juilliard Theater, New York City, March 12.