''Zaïde, reine de Grenade'' (Zaïde, Queen of Grenada) is a '' ballet-héroïque'' written by the French

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (12 May 1703 – 11 January 1755) was a French composer, harpsichordist, organist, and administrator.Lionel Sawkins and David Fuller"Royer, Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace" Grove Music Online. Biography Born in Turin, Royer ...

, to a text by the

Abbé de La Marre The abbé de La Marre (or La Mare) (Quimper, 1708 – Bavaria, 1742) was an 18th-century French homme de lettres.Antoine de Léris says he committed suicide in 1746 at Cheb in Bohemia (''Dictionnaire des théâtres'', 1763, p. 608). Voltaire was in ...

, first performed in

1739 Events January–March * January 1 – Bouvet Island is discovered by French explorer Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, in the South Atlantic Ocean. * January 3: A 7.6 earthquake shakes the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region ...

. Royer's "sparse but sensuous orchestral textures with flutes and oboes very prominent" have been praised in ''Zaïde'' together with "his exuberant choral writing and his fluid treatment of recitative and aria"., reviewing a concert at

St John's, Smith Square St John's Smith Square is a redundant church in the centre of Smith Square, Westminster, London. Sold to a charitable trust as a ruin following firebombing in the Second World War, it was restored as a concert hall. This Grade I listed churc ...

Performance history

''Zaïde'' was first performed, under the direction of the composer, on 3 September 1739 for the wedding of King

Louis XV Louis XV (15 February 1710 – 10 May 1774), known as Louis the Beloved (french: le Bien-Aimé), was King of France from 1 September 1715 until his death in 1774. He succeeded his great-grandfather Louis XIV at the age of five. Until he reache ...

's daughter, when it ran for 44 performances, and was revived for the wedding of the Dauphin in 1745, and again for the wedding of

Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...

1770 Events January– March * January 1 – The foundation of Fort George, Bombay is laid by Colonel Keating, principal engineer, on the site of the former Dongri Fort. * February 1 – Thomas Jefferson's home at Shadwell, Virgi ...

. It has been performed at concert in 2005 in London in a new edition by Lionel Sawkins.

Roles

Synopsis

The plot is quite simple. Queen Zaïde in the

Alhambra The Alhambra (, ; ar, الْحَمْرَاء, Al-Ḥamrāʾ, , ) is a palace and fortress complex located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain. It is one of the most famous monuments of Islamic architecture and one of the best-preserved palaces of the ...

has to decide between the love of two rival

Moorish The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or se ...

princes and chooses the good prince.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zaide, Reine De Grenade French-language operas Operas by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer Operas set in Spain Operas 1739 operas