Opera on DVD: "Idomeneo"
Available at Amazon: W. A. Mozart, Idomeneo, Luciano Pavarotti, Hildegard Behrens, Frederica von Stade, Ileana Cotrubas, Metropolitan Opera, James Levine (re-released on April 11, 2006) |
Idomeneo, Glyndebourne Festival, T. Nunn, B. Haitink, P. Langridge, Y. Kenny Idomeneo, Drottningholm Slottsteater (released May 16, 2006) |
What will you get with this Deutsche Grammophon re-release? A vast production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, whose Met staging of L'Italiana in Algeri was just unearthed again here in Washington and whose "on location" film version of La Clemenza di Tito I recently reviewed. The set is mostly dominated by a massive mask, representing the ever-present menace of Neptune and based, it seems to me, on the Bocca della Verità in Rome. At other times, there are huge backdrops based on the engravings and drawings by Piranesi and others in the 18th century, showing the classical ruins of Greece and Rome. Ponnelle's costumes are all from Mozart's time, 18th-century Vienna, a conceit also found in the Clemenza film, meant to show that although the story is classical, Mozart was actually creating a work about his own age. This is another one of those operas about a ruler stepping down from power to avoid the death of the innocent.
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Mozart himself recycled the opera later in life, in a severely cut and reshaped version. (As stated in the liner notes, the composer's wife reported after Mozart's death that his time working on this opera in Munich was one of the happiest in his short life, probably filled with hope that he would soon have a court position that would allow him to create opera. Life does not always turn out as we hope.) I congratulate the Met because, although they took long enough to get around to performing Idomeneo, they used the critical edition by the excellent Mozart specialist Daniel Heartz for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, reconstituting the (almost) complete score for the first time. Hooray for musicology! This nearly full version is three hours long, and the only major omission (an unfortunate one) is the ballet that Mozart composed to conclude the opera at Munich. I wish that we could get over the modern operatic aversion to lengthy ballets, as they are an essential and glorious heritage of the court origins of the genre.
The singing is, with few exceptions, absolutely stellar. Luciano Pavarotti, for all of his dramatic impediments, is powerful in the title role, a voice that always impresses in spite of its occasional imprecision and ugliness. Frederica von Stade gives one of her most convincing performances in a pants role ever, as Idomeneo's son, Idamante. Her Act III duetto ("S'io non moro a questi accenti") with the exquisite Ileana Cotrubas (as the Idamante's beloved Trojan princess, Ilia) and the subsequent quartetto (with Pavarotti and Hildegard Behrens as Elettra, who is also in love with Idamante) are all wonderful. The standout performance is Hildegard Behrens, as the obsessed and cracking Elettra: her unhinged performance of "Oh smania! oh furie!" at the end of the third act, in a frizzy, bright orange wig is one for the ages, incendiary singing married to frenetic acting. Instead of following the libretto's stage direction ("parte infuriata"), she is carried off, frozen where she falls prone, arms sticking up above her head. The only (slight) disappointment is older tenor John Alexander as a warbly and poorly accented Arbace, the confident of Idomeneo.
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All of this is by way to telling our Washington readers to attend the upcoming live performance of Mozart's Idomeneo this Friday and Saturday (June 2 and 3, 7:30 pm) by Opera Lafayette at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in College Park. It is a concert performance, but with dance provided by the New York Baroque Dance Company (hopefully, with that concluding ballet). The singing should be quite good, including Robert Baker as the High Priest, François Loup as the Voice of Neptune, and Millicent Scarlett as Elettra (I heard her powerful voice in excerpts from this role last October). This is the first concert in this summer's Washington Early Music Festival. Ionarts will be there.
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