This has to be one of my favorite arias. It is also very difficult to sing. I am posting Irmgard Seefried singing “Ruhe sanft” as well as two other sopranos singing the same aria, for comparison. I hope that you enjoy the post.
Mozart, Zaïde, “Ruhe sanft”
Ruhe sanft mein holdes Leben,
schlafe, bis dein Glück erwacht;
da, mein Bild will ich dir geben,
schau, wie freundlich es dir lacht:
ihr süssen Träume, wiegt ihn ein,
und lasset seinem Wunsch am Ende
die wollustreichen Gegenstände
zu reifer Wirklichkeit gedeihn
Mozart, Zaïde, “Rest in peace”
Rest in peace, my sweet love,
sleep until your happiness awakens;
here, I will give you my portrait,
see how kindly it smiles at you:
O sweet dreams, lull him to sleep,
and let his deepest desires
bloom into ripe reality
in the end.
Zaïde was left unfinished, and the only surviving version is an incomplete manuscript with no act divisions.
The opera is a singspiel (a German form of opera with spoken dialogue) that tells the story of a slave girl named Zaide who falls in love with her master, the Christian soldier Gomatz. The two plan to escape from their captors, the Sultan Soliman and his henchman Allazim, who have forced them into slavery. However, before they can escape, they are discovered by Soliman and Allazim. Soliman is captivated by Zaide’s beauty and offers her freedom in exchange for her love. Zaide refuses, and Soliman orders her and Gomatz to be imprisoned. In the end, Zaide and Gomatz are saved by a group of Christian soldiers who arrive to rescue them. The opera ends with a celebration of their freedom.
Mozart
The preparation of Zaide in 1780 was a decisive turning point in Mozart’s career. This Singspiel, spontaneously composed for the Viennese court of the ‘enlightened despot’ Joseph II and left incomplete, shines for the humanist themes it explores. For the first time, Mozart built a musical and dramaturgical echo chamber for what he believed to be right and good: the fight against tyranny, the power of true love and, above all, the inalienable quest for freedom. Even if Zaide draws on clichés of the ‘rescue’ plot and on the rococo turqueries of the period as its starting points, it surpasses them in terms of the psychological depth with which Mozart portrays his characters, and the rare musical intensity of the drama.
Following Mozart’s first departure from Salzburg in 1777, great changes had taken place in his life: his decisive meeting with his new friend Haydn, his discoveries of Munich and of the Mannheim orchestra, his disappointed love for Aloysia Weber, his disillusionment in Paris and the tragic death of his mother.
Mozart returned to Salzburg and to the service of Prince-Archbishop Colloredo with a heavy heart. However, he also returned to his native city profoundly changed. The large-scale vocal works he composed from then on carried the spirit of the Enlightenment and the philosophical and aesthetic movements that were stirring Europe. Zaide was the starting point for this new aesthetic, which refused to make concessions to gallant taste and instead explored the truth of the human soul. How can we fail to see a direct link between Mozart’s gradual emancipation from his tutelage (leaving Colloredo, leaving Salzburg, leaving his father) and his blossoming in the dramatic and sacred masterpieces to come: Idomeneo (1780—1), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1781—2), the Great Mass in C minor (1782—3), and more.