The Goose of Cairo - Mozart completed by Stephen Oliver

Mozart started writing The Goose of Cairo (L'oca del Cairo) in 1783 (the year after Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail) but did not complete it and the torso was completed by the composer Stephen Oliver (1950-1992) in 1990. Oliver's version was premiered at the Batignano Opera Festival in 1991 with David Parry conducting. Parry will be again at the helm when the work is performed by the London Mozart Players at St John's Smith Square on 14 April 2016 at what will be the work's UK premiere. And it is being performed in English for the first time, in a new translation. The cast includes Fflur Wyn, Soraya Mafi, Ellie Laugharne, Diana Montague, Robert Murray, Christopher Diffey, Alexander Baker and Quirijn de Lang. 

The work is a comic opera setting an Italian libretto of which Mozart complete seven of the ten numbers in the first act. Stephen Oliver extended it into a 90 minute work, by taking the original libretto and not only extending it but changing it. The work is far more than pastiche, but is an imaginative combination of Mozart's music with Oliver's own. Oliver wrote over 40 operas, from his first The Duchess of Malfi in 1971, to Timon of Athens in 1991 and L'Oca del Cairo which was his last real dramatic work

The concert is part of the London Mozart Players series Mozart Explored: 1783.