On April 3, at Alice Tully Hall, a concert revival by L'Opera Francais de New York - with narration written and delivered by the composer's descendant Alexander He rold replacing the original spoken dialogue - restores the subsequent action in what is said to be the opera's first New York hearing in more than a hundred years. A whirlwind potpourri of infectious tunes from the opera, it displays orchestration of a zest and finesse that bring to mind Weber, Mendelssohn and Berlioz. ![]() Today the overture is the sole excerpt that enjoys any name recognition, and that only barely. ''Zampa,'' introduced to wild acclaim at the Opera-Comique in Paris in 1831, remained a fixture in France, Italy and Germany through the 19th century. To no avail, and her show-stopping revenge well justifies the opera's alternative title, ''La Fiancee de Marbre,'' or ''The Marble Bride,'' even though - unlike her booming fatherly counterpart in Mozart - Alice utters not a sound. In the meantime he prudently had the stone maiden tossed in the sea. His fate had begun to look dire in the finale of the second of three acts, when the statue refused to surrender a wedding ring he had impiously slipped on its finger. ![]() As Mount Etna erupts in the background (the scene is in Sicily), the scoundrel ends up crushed in the embrace of the statue of Alice Manfredi, a 16-year-old Florentine he seduced and abandoned a decade before the curtain rises. ![]() Or Zampa, the pirate king in Ferdinand Herold's opera by that name.
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