Shining Beauty The current Italian season of Mozart's 'Idomeneo', Music and Vision March 6

Shining Beauty
The current Italian season of Mozart's 'Idomeneo',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

Mozart's Idomeneo, Re di Creta deals with the king's journey to get back to his island after the Trojan War. The production I saw and heard in Bologna [Teatro Comunale, 28 February 2010] is probably the most travelled opera seria of the current Italian season: it is a joint effort by the opera houses of Torino, Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia, Ferrara and Ravenna. Its journey started in January 2010 and will be completed, for the time being, at the end of March, but there are rumors that other houses may join in, and chip in; thus the travel, through Italy, may be extended to other towns either this or the next 'season'.
The production follows the 1781 version of the opera seria but cuts the long final ballet (presumably for cost reasons and not to have too long an evening show) and interpolates the 1781 score with parts of the version prepared in 1786 for Vienna (but apparently never staged at that time).
Idomeneo, Re di Creta was intended as the young Mozart's graduation as a major European composer. It was commissioned by the Bavarian King's Munich Theatre: however, his 1781 version had only a few performances. Nothing is known about the planned 1786 Vienna staging. In the twentieth century, Richard Strauss showed that the nearly unknown opera seria was a complex and marvellous jewel. It features some of the most brilliant orchestration in Mozart operas. For several years, the Strauss re-elaboration was included in the repertory of many opera houses. After World War II, the practice was to go back to the original 1781 version; Strauss' re-elaboration had a few performances not too many years ago in Martina Franca (a summer festival in Southern Italy). The 1786 version is rarely performed, even though it was for a few years in the New York City Opera repertory.
The differences between the 1781 and 1786 versions are mostly that, in the 1786 version, the Idamante role, originally for castrato, is re-written for a tenor, and that a very special aria is added -- for Idamante with a 'solo' violin to accompany his voice.
In modern productions, Idomeneo, Re di Creta has often been given a psychological reading: it is shown as a mirror of the love and tensions between Wolfgang Amadeus and his father Leopold, a padre padrone organizing and running his children's lives. This main theme is intertwined with a complex sentimental and carnal plot: Idamante is in love with the slave Trojan Princess Ilia, whilst Elettra (who just killed her mother and is wandering from Greek territory to Greek territory) has a rather carnal crush on him and tries all she can to bring the young Prince under her bed sheets. In addition, King Idomeneo cursed Neptune during his travel home from Troy; his kingdom is terrorized by monsters until Idamante is sacrificed to the Gods. Eventually, there is a harmonious and happy solution for everyone except Elettra.

Barbara Bargnesi as Ilia and Giuseppina Bridelli as Idamante in 'Idomeneo'. Photo © 2010 Rocco Casaluci
Last July, at the Aix-en-Florence Festival, Olivier Py added a lot of politics into this already complicated scheme: the Trojans were slaves from several countries (Africa, the Middle East), Ilia is a black African, and Idomeneo's soldiers were very rough on this lot, where men were kept in a dungeon and women about to be sold to brothels. Idamante (in love with Ilia) tries a general inter-ethnic reconciliation -- not well thought of by the reactionary High Priest. Also, the staging was in modern times with multi-floor metallic machinery in permanent motion, and dancers and mimes almost continuously in action. In the final ballet, the whole of Crete was dancing or rather jumping up and down; this thoroughly confused the audience. Also Py's Idomeneo travelled quite a bit: from Aix to Bremen, Vienna, Luxemburg and a few French opera houses. The King's fate seems to be always on the road.

Giuseppina Bridelli as Idamante and chorus in 'Idomeneo'. Photo © 2010 Rocco Casaluci
The stage director of the current Italian production, Davide Livermore, states that his intention is to give another political reading to Idomeneo : the central role of the person and the pursuit of happiness. Luckily, there is almost no politics on stage, just a vibrant psychological and passionate drama. In a timeless space, where the sea is always present, there only two props: a beaten down American convertible car from the 1950s -- the transport of Elettra dressed as Rita Hayward in the well known blockbuster Gilda -- and a queen-sized bed where Ilia wants to take Idamante as her legitimate man and husband. No doubt, the young prince loses his virginity, a bit forcibly, in Elettra's automobile, but at the end of the opera he is fit to be a loyal bridegroom to Ilia. Neptune and his monsters are within Idomeneo -- not devilish forces; the King can free himself from them only when he fully appreciates the meaning of suffering. In short, there is more Freud and Jung than Karl Marx in this reading. I think this is the correct way to approach the improbable text.

Francesco Meli in the title role of 'Idomeneo' (Act 3). Photo © 2010 Rocco Casaluci
Musically, the performance is strongly in the hands of two thirty-year-olds -- the best age to understand what Mozart was up to when composing Idomeneo. Michele Mariotti is an excellent conductor; he draws all the shining beauty of the orchestration -- considered the best of Mozart's operas. Francesco Meli is the protagonist; he started his career some five years ago as a coloratura tenor, now he can handle the full range of most tenor roles (but he avoids the mezza voce) and can darken the colour of his voice to be nearly a bari-tenor. Angeles Blancas Gulin is a highly dramatic Elettra; in her third act aria, she exploded in vocal agility. All the rest of the cast were young graduates of the Bologna Scuola dell'Opera: Giuseppina Bridelli (Idamante) and Enea Scala (Arsace) were quite good. The others were somewhat green.
Copyright © 6 March 2010 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
IDOMENEO
BOLOGNA
ITALY
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