Zanaida

“Zanaida” premiered in 1763 at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket and, together with Orione, is one of the two new works with which Johann Christian Bach successfully continued in London the operatic career he had begun in Italy. An avant-gardist of his time, the composer fused stylistic elements of the Baroque and Classical eras, drawing on Pietro Metastasio’s first opera libretto, Siface, re di Numidia, as his literary source.

The Turkish princess Zanaida travels to Persia with a delegation to marry King Tamasse and to seal peace between the two peoples. A new era is meant to begin. Tamasse, however, is in love with Osira and, aided by his mother Roselane, plots against Zanaida. Her execution draws near.

Rediscovered only in 2010 in a private American collection, this stage work unfolds its drama through the conflicts of its characters, whose freedom and self-determination are threatened with destruction amid the clash of personal ambitions, political power structures, and heroic idealism. Johann Christian Bach gives musical voice to their emotions of love, hatred, and forgiveness in music that is at once dazzlingly virtuosic and deeply moving.