Zaïre

Zaïre is a five-act tragedy in verse by Voltaire, written in about three weeks. It premiered on 13 August 1732 at the Théâtre de la rue des Fossés Saint-Germain in Paris, performed by the Comédie-Française, and was a considerable success: it was staged thirty-one times that year alone. Voltaire wrote it after the relative failure of his tragedy Eriphyle, responding to critics who faulted him for not placing love stories at the centre of his plays.

The action is set, according to the author, in the era of Saint Louis, although the plot and characters are largely fictional. Zaïre, a Christian girl captured as a child when Caesarea was sacked by Muslim armies, has been raised in the palace of Orosmane, the sultan, with whom she has fallen in love. When the ransom for the Christian captives arrives, her family, led by the elderly Lusignan, discovers that she is their lost daughter and urges her to be baptised in secret. The sultan, misreading the situation through jealousy, brings about a catastrophe: he kills Zaïre and, on learning the truth, takes his own life.

The play marked a turning point in Voltaire's career, convincing him of the dramatic possibilities of a central love story. It also moved away from tragedy built on a protagonist's fatal flaw toward tragedy that stirs pity: the heroine's downfall stems not from any fault of her own but from her Muslim lover's jealousy and her fellow Christians' intolerance. Voltaire even performed the role of Lusignan in private productions, drawing on his own experience of exile and imprisonment.

Its success travelled well beyond France. Aaron Hill translated it into English as Zara, which became the most frequently staged English adaptation of a Voltaire play, and the work inspired at least thirteen operas, among them Mozart's unfinished Zaïde. In France it continued to be revived through the nineteenth century, with Sarah Bernhardt in the title role in 1874, and it was the only Voltaire play the Comédie-Française staged during the twentieth century.