Storms at sea — turmoil, anguish, jealousy, despair— conflicting emotions — torn loyalties, so that every love feels like a betrayal — chaos, confusion — a miraculous ending. Welcome to Idomeneo, a breakthrough work that brought together everything Mozart had learned from life and art in his years of performing throughout Europe since early childhood: Baroque spectacle and Italian lyricism; sacred music for the chorus; the Gluck operas he had seen in Paris; his own early seria operas; the philosophy of the Enlightenment — but most of all his own lyrical genius and a sense of coming fully into his stupendous musical superpowers.
The Boston Baroque production in the Emerson Paramount on April 24th and 26th began with Ilia (Hera Hyesang Park) as the captive Trojan princess wavering between her love for the Greek prince Idamante (Valerie Eickhoff), and duty to her father and brothers, killed by the Greeks in the Trojan War.
The Chorus sings: the war is over. Soon, Idomeneo, King of Crete, (David Portillo) is washed up on his own shore singing of the “ombra” — shadow — over him because was saved from shipwreck and certain death by promising Neptune, God of the Seas, to sacrifice the first living creature he sees. Horror! It is his own son, Idamante.
In Homer’s Iliad, Idomeneo, King of Crete, is a strong and fierce Greek warrior who returns safely home after the Trojan War and never appears again in Greek mythology. The story of shipwreck and sacrifice came much later, from an obscure Roman commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid. A 1712 Tragedie Lyrique by Andre Campra Frenchified it up considerably by adding a love triangle with Elettra (Aviva Fortunata) as the unlikely third. The libretto by the poet/musician Giovanni Battista Varesco, working closely with Mozart and in the spirit of the Enlightenment, kept the love triangle but changed the ending by adding a literal deus ex machina whereby the son is saved, not sacrificed.
Idomeneo was Mozart’s ticket out of Salzburg, the sleepy native town where he felt misunderstood, unappreciated and too much under the sway of his controlling father Leopold. The success of Idomeneo allowed Mozart to move to Vienna, the center of music and culture. (Ironically, Salzburg, the place Mozart was so desperate to leave, now celebrates his birthday every year with Mozart Week, complete with concerts and shops filled with T-shirts, tote bags, cakes and chocolates with his portrait on them.)
The opera ends with Idomeneo graciously giving up his royal powers to his son and blessing his marriage (unlike Leopold!).
All four principals sang beautifully and there were good supporting roles by local favorites Omar Najmi, Joel Clemens, and Christina English. David Portillo especially conveyed real emotion and depth of meaning; and Fortunata’s mad scenes as Elettra brought down the house. Her final aria furiosa cleared the air in a mini-Gotterdammerung: the sea grew calm, and the winds sang softly, heralding the death of the old gods and the birth of a new religion of mercy and love.
In letters Mozart wrote to his father while working on the libretto, he mentioned “Hamlet and his Ghost”, and there is an ambivalent, haunted quality to the work, which Stage Director director Bill Barclay encouraged the singers to experience and convey to the audience.
Barclay spoke of wanting a lot of psychological realism, yet the production occasionally undermined it with the absurd costumes from different historical times — a one-size-fits-all Roman gladiator outfit, flapper swimsuits — that added confusion, rather than clarity, to the already confusing plot.
The opera’s central Enlightenment message of Love conquering War was muddled by dressing Park in a slinky black velvet evening gown with a big fur throw that she never seemed to know what to do with. Ilia is usually portrayed in her first aria as slave of war, one of the Trojan Women, still shackled in her chains; later Idomeneo sings that Idamante “cut her chains too soon.” What chains?
Barclay told me that opera needed more dynamic staging because “there’s not much an audience for four singers just standing on the stage singing”. Yet for me, the most moving moments in Idomeneo were just that: the heartbreak quartet with the four principals just standing on the stage singing of their soffrire and si gran dolore — suffering and such great sorrow — together and apart in an amazing Mozartian kaleidoscope of solos, duets, and trios within the quartet, each character wrapped up in their own tragedies, yet making music together as one.
The dress rehearsal for the first Idomeneo took place in Munich on Mozart’s 25th birthday Jan 27, 1781, and he may have experienced it as a rebirth, a new beginning, working for the first time with a big budget, big orchestra, and an appreciative audience under the patronage of the art-loving, slightly decadent Mannheim Court of Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria, who liked to imagine himself as an enlightened, peaceful monarch.
The opera takes place on the island of Crete, and the music is filled with the sound of the sea and “the sea within.” Huge video projections of the sea in all its stormy, moonlit motion set the scene as the splendid string section, led by concertmaster Christina Day Martinson, rocked and rippled through all the water, waves, and tears. Violinist Sarah Darling said, “There were times when it felt that we were creating the froth on top of the ocean, while the deeper parts of the orchestra swirled below us.”
The Mannheim Court had a splendid wind section, which inspired Mozart to write splendid music for it. Boston Baroque did the score full justice with its oboes, clarinets, bassoons, thundering horns, trumpets and trombones, played with flourish by some of the superstars of the Baroque wind world including Stephanie Corwin on bassoon, Justin Bland on trumpet, and Todd Williams on natural horn. Joseph Monticello’s delicate flute duet with Park in her exquisite aria Zefferetti summoned gentle breezes and flowers “watered with her own tears” to carry messages of love through the air like the Spring flowers in Botticelli’s Primavera, and brought a rare and lovely moment of peace to the storm-tossed, tormented sea.
Idomeneo launched Mozart into his last glorious ten years of composing some of the most beautiful music ever written, and some of the many pleasures of Idomeneo are premonitions of the great works to come.
But it’s a thrilling opera in its own right, and no costumes, no matter how ridiculous, could detract from the marvelous music, the beautiful singing, and the magnificent orchestra, led by guest conductor David Bates.
Rebecca Nemser has written about art and music in Boston for Art New England, WBUR Radio, The Boston Phoenix, Boston Magazine and others. Her Stories about Art can be found at https://www.rebeccanemser.com/.
