Synopsis

Act I. The action starts with stage effects: clouds, thunder and lightning, sunshine peaking through. Don Yozef Abravanel and his servant Fernando see a young woman washed up on the rocks, and initially think she drowned and was washed ashore. But she is alive, and in a song, asks Allah to pardon her for her sins. Don Yozef informs her that she is on an island near Spain, but he can’t get her back to the mainland because he has no ship. Struck by his kindness, the girl, Selima, tells him that she ran away from her father, a Turkish pasha in Algeria, after she fell in love with a Spaniard he captured and enslaved. She sings of how noble her beloved is, and certainly Allah wouldn’t punish her for that. She then describes how she and her beloved escaped on separate ships, but both of them sank, and everyone but her drowned. Don Yozef offers to get her back to her father, but she says that he is strict, and wouldn’t forgive what he sees as her treachery. It turns out that Don Yozef knows her father, and he begs her to return home, but Selima insists upon remaining true to her beloved. When she goes into Don Yozef’s house for lunch, Fernando, in a soliloquy, admits being smitten by her. A ship approaches the harbor, with Algerians under the leadership of Hassan Mahmoud—Don Yozef’s friend and Selima’s father—singing about defeating Spaniards. They leave Don Pedro, a Spanish knight, and his servant Pedrillo, on the beach. The two men wonder why they among all their captured countrymen were spared.

Act II. Hassan tells Don Pedro how impressed he was with the young man’s valor in battle, and therefore spared his life. Pedro says he’d rather be dead than a slave, and asks why Hassan killed all his comrades. Hassan tells of how a Spanish soldier stole his daughter, and thinking that Pedro finds him barbaric, points out that the Muslims have nothing in that department on the “civilized barbarians,” the Christians, as he describes in some detail the atrocities committed under the Inquisition. As he goes on about his daughter, he realizes from Pedro’s reactions that Pedro himself was her lover, but nevertheless promises not to enslave him, but rather to deliver him back to Spain.

Act III. Fernando shows Selima around the island. Don Yozef tries to console Hassan, who says that losing Selima in this way is worse than her being dead. Don Yozef, having ascertained that Hassan would forgive her, breaks the news that she’s alive. He won’t let Hassan see her yet, though, because he says she needs time to recover first. Hassan comes across an emotional Don Pedro, who has just been visiting his mother’s grave. He tells what he knows of his parents’ story: how they married secretly because her parents were opposed, then had to flee the Inquisition. He was raised in a convent, and never knew his father. Hassan, in asides, suggests he knows more. Hassan is reunited with Selima, and gives her a hard time after all.

Act IV. Hassan figures out that Don Yozef is Don Pedro’s father. Don Pedro confesses to being the one who spirited Selima away. Don Pedro asks Hassan whether he would let his daughter convert to Christianity. Hassan asks, am I demanding that you become a Turk? Then Don Yozef reveals himself: as a Jew, the son of Don Isaac Abravanel and his wife Leah. Hassan turns out to be Leah’s brother, and speaks Hebrew. In the finale, everyone sings and dances with praise for the universal God.