Zoraida di Granata

Zoraida di Granata (also Zoraide di Granata or Zoraïda di Granata) is a two-act melodramma eroico (opera seria or 'heroic' opera) by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto, partly prepared by Bartolomeo Merelli (whose delays Donizetti criticized), drew on Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian's 1791 play Gonzalve de Cordoue ou Grenade Reconquise and on Luigi Romanelli's libretto for Giuseppe Nicolini's Abenamet e Zoraide.

When Donizetti arrived in Rome, carrying a letter of introduction from his teacher and mentor Johann Simon Mayr to poet and librettist Jacopo Ferretti, he secured his help in revising Merelli's text.^[1]

Although it was Donizetti's first theatrical success "and the opera in which he began to adopt 'Rossinian' techniques",^[2] the original 1822 version of this violent love story was never given a complete performance because Amerigo Sbigoli, the tenor originally cast in the role of Abenamet, died shortly before the first night, with no replacement available. Donizetti quickly adapted this role for contralto, though omitting three numbers in the process.

The first performance took place at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, on 28 January 1822 and it and its composer received great acclaim in the weekly Notizie del giorno:

"A new and very happy hope is rising for the Italian musical theatre. The young Maestro Gaetano Donizetti...has launched himself strongly in his truly serious opera, Zoraida. Unanimous, sincere, universal was the applause he justly collected from the capacity audience...".^[3]

The opera was presented in a revised edition at the same theatre on 7 January 1824, and given a revival in Lisbon in 1825.^[3]