Zampa Overture

• Zampa is a three-act comic opera written in 1831. The opera premiered in Paris that same year at the Opéra-Comique and was dedicated to Louis Philippe I, the penultimate monarch of France.
  • The subtitle for the opera is “The Marble Bride.”¹
• While Hérold’s opera isn’t very popular today, the opera’s overture has become a staple of the concert hall and is one of the composer’s best-known works.
• The plot of Zampa involves a statue that comes to life to vindicate itself against the evil acts of the opera’s title character and drags him to hell. If this sounds like the plot of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, you’re not mistaken! Hérold admired Mozart’s famous opera and used it as inspiration for his own work.²

Read a short synopsis of Hérold’s opera here.

1. “Zampa (Hérold, Ferdinand),” IMSLP, accessed December 3, 2024, https://imslp.org/wiki/Zampa_(H%C3%A9rold,_Ferdinand).
2. Maureen Buja, “Saved by the Statue – Hérold’s Zampa,” Interlude (2020), accessed December 3, 2024, https://interlude.hk/saved-by-the-statue-herolds-zampa/.