Smorg's Unidiomatic Look at Mozart's K. 366, Idomeneo, Re Di Creta

Composed by the then 25 years young Wolfgang Mozart in 1781, Idomeneo (K. 366) represents a major turning point in the young composer's career where he became a truly dramatically driven opera composer who shot for coherent story-telling rather than just setting brilliant music to individual scenes. Before Idomeneo, Mozart's operas were best enjoyed in pieces. After Idomeneo, you can't cut any note from his operatic music without doing real injury to the story as a whole!

Mozart set his music to Gian Battista Varesco's adaptation of Antoine Danchet's Idomenée, an expansion from a side story in Homer's epic, The Iliad. In this story, Idomeneo, the Greek King of Crete, left his kingdom in the care of his young son Idamante while he joined Agamemnon and Menelaus in the siege of Troy.... which didn't resolve in a complete victory for the Greeks until 10 years later.

The opera opens in Crete where Idamante has now grown up to be quite a handsome young prince without a glory to his name. His long absent father had sent his loots of war ahead of his return. All good stuff, to be sure, but none fairer than the beautiful Trojan Princess Ilia, whom Idamante took an instant attraction to. Ilia, to her own horror, also finds herself surprisingly love-struck by the Greek prince... the fact of which lies heavily on her conscience (perfectly understandable considering the circumstance of the time). It also doesn't help her comfort that the rather notoriously batty Greek Princess Elettra (AKA Elektra, in town seeking asylum after her dear mom, Clytamnestra, had successfully convinced her lover to chop the head of her husband (and Elettra's dad), Agamemnon, off. To learn more of the gory details, simply look up the myth of the house of Atreus) is also taking no trouble to disguise her horny-ness toward Idamante.

Batty Elettra maybe, but she is no fool when it comes to smelling the unbecomingly romantic scent between Idamante and Ilia. So when everybody went off looking for sign of returning fleet, she went into such a colorful acoustic tirade over her romantic rejection that a malevolent storm brew up in the ocean and gave Idomeneo and his crew a real fright... So much so that the old king promises to slay the first person he meets ashore as blood sacrifice to Nettuno (Neptune) in return for the calming of the tempest. The story being taken from a Greek tragedy should then inform us that no such compromise can be granted from a Greek god without a sumo-size dose of irony blowing in from the left field....

If you had guessed that the 1st Homo sapiens Idomeneo is sure to run into when he comes ashore would be his one and only son, Idamante, then you can give yourself a big pat on the back.

Naturally, killing his only son is a promise the old Greek king finds very hard to keep. Though he does his best to keep his deal with the dev.. er.. deity (ahem!) to himself even as the payback-seeking Nettuno pounds the island nation with a series of raging storms. A brainstorming session with his adviser, Arbace, produces the rather logically fetching solution of spiriting Idamante out of the Sea God's reach by sending him away on a sea voyage with the mission to return Elettra to her homeland (don't look at me, I didn't write this story!).

The prospect of having Idamante to herself for a few weeks at sea pleases Elettra... and practically nobody else. Though the plan doesn't come to any fruition since the impatient Nettuno seizes the moment to send up a particularly murderous sea monster up to start eating innocent Cretans in the city. In the public outcry for explanation of Nettuno's rather vindictive antics, Idomeneo confesses that he had instigate the god's blood lust by breaking his vow during the previous sea tempest. This prompts Idamante, who has somehow managed to slay Nettuno's gluttonous beast during his brief time off the stage, to offer himself up as the sacrifice necessary to keep the sea from invading his city. Ilia then throws herself in, asking to die in her beloved's place. This creates such an overpowering atmosphere of corniness that the exasperated (or touched... depending on the staging of the opera) Nettuno throws in a peace offering on the condition that that Idomeneo abdicates the throne to his son.

And it all ends happily with Idomeneo throwing a retirement party (of a sort).... except for the little glitch that Elettra had gone mad in the meanwhile (having to go home alone while Idamante gets to stay and shag Ilia is just too much for her delicate sensibility to handle) and starts hallucinating about snakes and furies.

Although this work is essentially opera seria in style (a formal work based on a serious drama featuring clear cut dramatically static arias connected by story-moving sung speech/recitative), its' music flows like no other opera of the same style does. From the gorgeous seascape sonata that opens the show (with its use of recurring theme - something that Wagner would later develop into his trademark Leitmotif system) to the flawlessly fluent transitions between arias, ensemble numbers, and recitatives (mostly orchestrally accompanied with only a few by the usual continuo instrument). Though the recitatives here are still easily distinguished from the real 'songs', they no longer allow you to easily shift your attention elsewhere to wait until the next 'song' appears.

Idomeneo is also the work where one can really see how the mature Mozart really showed how dramatically effective the use of ensembles and choruses can be in an opera (back in those days they were just weaning from the star-singers-oriented and arias-overloaded style of the Baroque operas) and how adept he was at using the instruments of the orchestra to set a very sonorously dynamic backdrop to each scene. There are 9 distinct choral numbers in this opera, and all of them serve to both highlight the acute emotion of the scene while help propelling the story onward. Listen to how Mozart connects Elettra's Tutte nel cor vi sento and the chorus 'Pieta! Numi pieta!' There is no pause in the music between these 2 adjacent musical numbers. Listen to how the whistling wind (the flute & the piccolo) in Elettra's rage aria gets blown over into wild gales and water-sprouts blowing at the fleet's masts. How the strings unleash clasps of thunder and crashing waves on the vessels... The chorus even eases off into calming waves that wash the survivors of the shipwreck ashore.

Mozart was really a drama-oriented composer. He even cut two exquisitely gorgeous bits of music from the 1st performance of Idomeneo; the title role's sublimely beautiful aria 'Torna la pace' and Idamante's heroic 'No la morte!', for the sake of keeping the opera as dramatically concise and compelling as possible. He also composed a tamer version of Idomeneo's virtuoso rage aria, 'Fuor del mar' to make sure that the tenor who would be singing the role in the work's debut in Vienna could sing it (the original version that was premiered earlier in Munich by Anton Raaf is considered to be one of the most difficult tenor arias in the operatic repertoire).

Those who are new to the opera would also be interested to know that in the time of the composition of Idomeneo, the lead singers in the operatic firmament were still the castrati, young men who were... er... surgically altered at puberty to preserve the tonal quality of their singing voice. So, the hero role of Idamante was composed for the voice of a soprano castrato by the name of Vincenzo Dal Prato. Nowadays we don't castrate guys to enable them to sing in the soprano range anymore, so Idamante is often portrayed by a female mezzo-soprano (most of whom neither look nor sound anything like a guy... but then, opera is all about the successful suspension of disbelief, ay?)... So... don't get all offended to see the gal in drag getting cozy with Princess Ilia when you catch this opera in live theater. For the intent of it, they're are straight couple!

Some sample clips of scenes from Idomeneo:
- Idomeneo's 'Fuor del mar' (original Munich version)
- Act II trio between Idamante, Elettra and Idomeneo
- Chorus 'Placido e il mar' (Elettra's not so batty moment)