Unfinished Mozart

Posted by Sarah Canice Funke Aug 13, 2006

According to an NPR article, Mozart's unfinished opera Zaide recently opened in New York. Mozart began work on the opera on his own time, but dropped it when he was commissioned to write Idomeneo. The opera is a demonstration of Mozart's earlier work, just before his operatic writing became a popular success. Though the article makes no mention of the similarity, the plot of Zaide appears to resemble that of Die Entfuring. Both are set in a Turkish harem. Director Peter Sellars contemporizes the setting to a sweatshop, peopled with African-American and Asian workers.

I am curious now about the similarities between this unfinished work and Die Entfuring. Does anyone else know whether Mozart incorporated some of this prior work into his latter German opera?