Zemira e Azor, Schwetzingen — a charming operatic treasure is unearthed

More than 200 years before Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, composer André Ernest Modeste Grétry’s Zemira e Azor told a similar story. Grétry’s opéra comique, which premiered in France in 1771, was part of a fashion for fairytales and became such an international success that Catherine the Great, far away in St Petersburg, ended up naming her favourite greyhound Zemira.

And then, as so often happens, the whole thing was forgotten. John Dew disinterred it for Bielefeld in 1991, but despite its infectious, unpretentious charm and timeless plot, it cannot be said to have re-entered the repertoire.

The annual Schwetzingen SWR music festival in the German town’s jewel-like 18th-century Schlosstheater pairs world premieres with forgotten treasures. This year’s premiere should have been Isabel Mundry’s Im Dickicht, but the composer missed her deadlines and the production was cancelled.

In the hands of stage director Nigel Lowery, music director Bernhard Forck and Berlin’s Akademie für Alte Musik, Zemira e Azor was much more than a consolation prize. It was a discovery and a delight. As he so often does, Lowery mined the world of the childish subconscious for an act of storytelling that is both witty and profound. Jean-François Marmontel’s libretto tells the familiar tale of a prince turned into a monster by an evil enchantress, rescued by the pure love of his young bride. Lowery tells it as a coming-of-age story, with Zemira coming to realise that her handsome suitor, projected in her imagination into a hairy werewolf, is in fact a charismatic football star; the entire cast dons team colours, and all ends well.

The music (performed here in the 1776 Italian version) is closer to Mozart’s world than to that of Rameau, with borrowings from Holzbauer and Jommelli, and the orchestra attacked it with levity and vim. Forck’s musical direction was at once fleet and organic; he drove the music forward without forgetting to breathe with the singers. And the cast was excellent. Amelia Scicolone mastered the innocent coloratura of Zemira with easy charm, Patrick Kabongo was a likeable beast from the start, with polished musicality and wit, Seunghee Kho had a show-stopping aria as big sister Fatima, while Raphael Wittmer’s ingenuous Ali and Thomas Berau’s fatherly Sandro pinned it all together. Wholesome stuff.

★★★★☆

swr.de