Voltaire’s drama Alzire, ou Les Américains is for several reasons not only one of his most successful but also one of his most intriguing plays: It is his only drama situated in Latin- America and thematises the conflicts of an indigene Inca couple in the times of Spanish colonialism by paralleling a love and a political intrigue. Looking at its poetics and Voltaire’s Correspondance, which documents the genesis of the play and a debate about plagiarism (Lefranc de Pompignan), this article aims to show that Alzire can be seen as a paradigmatic drama of the upcoming ‘American exotism’ and the bourgeois theatre culture under the signs of sensibility. Particularly interesting in this context is the stage history of the play; Alzire was not only performed at the Parisian Comédie-Française (premiere on the 27th of January 1736) but also at the royal court (with Madame Pompadour as Alzire) and by the crew of a slave boat crossing the Caribbean. The analysis of the aesthetics as well as the stage history of the play reveal that Voltaire’s success as ‘homme de théâtre’ greatly results from the sentimentalisation and hybridization of tragedy. Alzire can thus be seen as a relatively modern play, presenting enlightenment as well as ‘national’ issues and neoclassicist as well as melodramatic elements.