' (The Goose of Cairo or The Cairo Goose, K. 422) is an incomplete Italian opera buffa in three acts, begun by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in July 1783 but abandoned in October. The complete libretto by Giambattista Varesco remains. Mozart composed seven of the ten numbers of the first act, plus some recitative, as well a sketch for a further aria; the extant music amounts to about 45 minutes.

The autograph manuscript of the opera is preserved in the Berlin State Library.

Background

Mozart's correspondence shows he wanted to write a comic opera to a new text for the Italian company in Vienna, after being commissioned to write one by Count Franz Orsini-Rosenberg, the director of the court theatre. He had only just met Lorenzo Da Ponte, who would later pen the libretti for several of Mozart's most successful operas, but Da Ponte was not available (he was working as a librettist with Antonio Salieri)

Fragments from L'oca del Cairo, Lo sposo deluso, and Der Schauspieldirektor have been combined as Waiting for Figaro, performed in 2002 by the Bampton Classical Opera. In 1991, the in Berlin performed a combined version of L'oca del Cairo and Lo sposo deluso as Die Gans von Kairo with a new libretto by Peter Lund and additional compositions by . Lund added three muses commenting on the absurdity of the plot, highlighting the librettist's arbitrariness and thus commenting on the historical events leading to the opera being left uncompleted.

Roles

{| class="wikitable"

|+

!Role<br />(role names for the French stage premiere)

| tenor

|

|-

| (The eunuch)

|

| Bonnet

|-

| Lavina, Celidora's companion

  • 2007 – Lo sposo deluso, L'oca del Cairo and other fragments by W. A. Mozart, with Ann Murray, Marianne Hamre, Graham Smith, Josef Wagner, Marisa Martins, Jeremy Ovenden, Matthias Klink, Silvia Moi, Miljenko Turk, Malin Hartelius and the Camerata Salzburg conducted by Michael Hofstetter. DVD of the live performance at the 2006 Salzburg Festival (Deutsche Grammophon 0734250)
  • 2018 – L'oca del Cairo & Lo sposo deluso, Herman Bekaert (baritone), Rolande van der Paal (soprano), Ioan Micu (tenor), Bernard Loonen (tenor), Leonie Schoon (soprano), Gretje Anthoni (soprano), Romain Bischoff (baritone); Kameropera Antwerpen, Hans Rotman; CPO

Notes

Sources

  • L'oca del Cairo: Mozart's autograph manuscript in the Berlin State Library.
  • Libretto (composed numbers only) and Dramatis Personæ, opera.stanford.edu