La rencontre imprévue

La rencontre imprévue, ou Les pèlerins de la Mecque Wq. 32 (The Unexpected Encounter, or The Pilgrims to Mecca) is a three-act opéra comique, composed in 1763 by Christoph Willibald Gluck to a libretto by Louis Dancourt after the 1726 comédie en vaudeville Les pèlerins de la Mecque by Alain René Lesage and d'Orneval. The death of Isabella of Parma, the archduke's wife, occasioned a revision of the spoken text downplaying the feigned death by which princess Rezia tests her beloved. The work was first performed in this form as La rencontre imprévue at the Burgtheater, Vienna on January 7, 1764. Dancourt's original text, titled Les pèlerins de la Mecque and designated as a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, was not premiered until 1990 (see Recordings).

Gluck's longest opéra-comique and considered his finest, La rencontre imprévue was his most popular work in the genre in the 18th century. It was performed in French in Brussels (1766), Bordeaux (as Ali et Rezia, 19 May 1766), Amsterdam (1768), The Hague (1768), Mannheim (1768), Copenhagen (1772), Liège (23 December 1776), Cassel (1780), Lille (17 November 1783), and Marseilles (1784). It was translated into German as Die unvermuthete Zusammenkunft oder Die Pilgrimme von Mecca and performed in Frankfurt (16 April 1771), Vienna (1776 at the Kärntnertor Theater; 26 July 1780 at the Burgtheater), Munich (9 March 1779), Berlin (17 October 1783, the first Gluck opera to be performed there), and many other cities.

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