Le tribut de Zamora

"Le tribut de Zamora" is an opera in four acts by Charles Gounod, his last work for the stage. The libretto by Adolphe d'Ennery was offered to Gounod after negotiations with Verdi stalled, and involves a young couple on their wedding day, a forced tribute of twenty virgins, a slave auction at which the would-be groom is outbid, a madwoman who turns out to be the heroine's mother and regains her reason on murdering a tyrant, and a magnanamous second-in-command.

The premiere at the "Opéra"'s Palais Garnier on April 1, 1881 was a success, Hermosa's patriotic "Debout! enfants de l'Ibérie!" being enthusiastically encored. Recent criticism is less kind, calling it "musty...too reminiscent of his earlier work" [Harding 1973 p202] or dismissing it as an exercise in "spagnuolismo" [Huebener 1990 p218]

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