Azara
libretto by John Knowles Paine · premiered 1903
Azara is an English-language American opera in three acts with music and libretto by John Knowles Paine. It is based on a anonymous Middle French story, Aucassin and Nicolette. Paine began work on Azara in 1883 and finished it in 1898.
A drama set in Provence in the Middle Ages, Azara "confronts daughter with guardian, son with father, and pursuer with fugitive." The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera said the plot "is a classic conflict between Christians and Muslims, with the requisite opposing choruses, and a private story is set against the political background although the two spheres are never truly integrated." The work premiered in 1903 in a concert version at Chickering Hall in Boston. Azara has never been fully staged. Paine's biographer wrote that Azara was "the supreme effort of his life and caused him the greatest disappointment in its failure to reach production."
Text from the Wikipedia article "Azara (opera)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.