Somewhere towards the end, there is a short moment of hope. The possibility of forgiveness. The possibility of reconciliation and fraternization. Everything is up in the air. Will Soliman, the despotic ruler of the Serail forgive the lovers Zaide and Gomatz who are desperately in love which each other and try to flee from him? Will they be all able to live together in peace and friendship? In a typical libretto of the 18th century this would be the moment in which the whole plot would transform into the lieto fine, the happy end. Not so in Zaide. Mozart’s Singspiel breaks off exactly at the point of highest tension, directly after Soliman reinforces his decision to kill the main characters Zaide and Gomatz. No solution, no release. The drama unfinished.

Zaide was left unfinished by Mozart. It lacks an ouverture and a closing scene and also the dialogue between the musical numbers. Since the dialogue is essential for an understanding of the action – the arias contain reflections on the dramatic situation only – Zaide is in fact an empty torso. Claus Guth (conception and staging) and Chaya Czernowin have filled this empty hull with flesh and blood by interlacing a new opera, Adama, a composition that functions as a counterpoint to Mozart’s fragment. The resulting work not only brings Mozart’s Zaide back to life, it also makes it relevant to contemporary listeners. The author and composer achieved this by adding another strand to what is extant of the original plot. This new plot tells the story of Zaide and Gomatz and of a Palestinian man and an Israeli woman. Both couples are madly in love but cannot have a relationship in their worlds. Zaide and Gomatz live in a foreign Serail, the Palestinian-Israeli couple lives in modern days Israel which is torn by terror and politics.

Chaya Czernowin’s music, which is played by a second orchestra that sits in a separate room on stage, is cleverly woven into the fabric of Mozart’s music. Sometimes it seems to arise smoothly from Mozart’s Italian idiom, sometimes it marks a decided counterpoint to it. The combination of classicism and avantgarde in the music, and fiction and realism in the plot created a work of intensive contrasts full of severe emotions. At yesterday’s world premiere the audience was torn: some were moved by what they saw and heard, others were audibly unpleased.