Guest
Albert Lortzing ZAR und ZIMMERMANN Production 1969 Conducted by Charles MACKERRAS The HAMBURG PHILHARMONIC STATE ORCHESTRA The Chorus of HAMBURG STATE OPERA The Ballet of HAMBURG STATE OPERA Casts: Peter the Great RAYMOND WOLANSKY Peter Ivanov PETER HAAGE Van Bett HANS SOTIN Marie LUCIA POPP Admiral Lefort HERBERT FLIETHER Lord Syndham NOEL MANGIN Marquis de Châteauneuf HORST WILHELM Widow Browe URSULA BOESE Officer FRANZ GRUNDHEBER Zar und Zimmermann (Tsar and Carpenter) is an opera in three acts, music by Albert Lortzing, libretto by the composer after Georg Christian Römer's Der Bürgermeister von Saardam, oder Die zwei Peter, itself based on a French work entitled Le Bourgesmestre de Sardam, ou Les deux Pierres by Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier de Mélésville, Jean Toussaint Merle and Eugène Centiran de Boirie. In 1956 it was adapted into an East German film The Czar and the Carpenter. Gaetano Donizetti had set the same story in his 1827 opera Il borgomastro di Saardam. Synopsis The action takes place in Saardam, Holland, in 1698. Peter the Great of Russia, disguised as Peter Michaelov, is working in the Dutch shipyards in order to learn nautical trades. He befriends the deserter Peter Ivanov, who is in love with the Burgmeister Van Bett's daughter Marie. Asked whether Peter the Great is really in the shipyard, the Burgmeister identifies the wrong Peter. The Russian and English ambassadors are deceived, but the French ambassador Chateauneuf recognises the real Tsar. Van Bett prepares to send Peter Ivanov home in state, whilst the real Tsar departs quietly for Russia.
