"Padre, germani, addio!" from Idomene

Composition and premiere: Mozart wrote Idomeneo, re di Crita (“Idomeneo, King of Crete”) on a libretto by Gianbattista Varesco in 1780, on commission from Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria. It was premiered in Munich at the Residenztheater (Cuvilliés Theatre, named for its architect) on January 29, 1781, two days after the composer’s 25th birthday. Previous BSO performances: Idomeneo excerpts—arias, the Overture, and the ballet music—have been performed by the BSO since the orchestra’s second season, 1882-1883, including most recently at Tanglewood a performance of the Overture under Robert Spano’s direction in August 1999. First/previous Tanglewood performances: The first American performances of Idomeneo were staged productions in the Theatre-Concert Hall by the Tanglewood Music Center under Boris Goldovsky’s direction on August 4 and 6, 1947. The BSO gave a complete concert performance of the opera in the Shed on July 13, 1991, under Seiji Ozawa.  

As late as the middle of the last century, the operatic output of Mozart’s maturity had been the victim of an extraordinarily checkered reception. While The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute have been beloved repertoire staples more or less since the day they were first unveiled, other scarcely less worthy works, such as Così fan tutte and The Abduction from the Seraglio, had a much rougher time of it. Of these, the sacrifice drama Idomeneo was arguably appreciated least properly of all: though Stendhal felt it “incomparable” and Brahms cherished its “beautiful dissonances,” more characteristic was the attitude of Richard Strauss, who produced a mongrel performance edition of the score for its 1931 sesquicentennial. While he had long been a devotee of this then obscure work, Strauss heartily deplored Mozart’s “interminable recitatives,” and took a slash-and-burn approach to characters and whole scenes. Yet today it is precisely the flexibility and ingenuity with which Idomeneo treats those “interminable recitatives” that seems its standout achievement. To some extent, this was a function of the tastes of the opera’s Bavarian commissioners. Ever the shrewd operator, Mozart tailored the music to the Munich court of Elector Karl Theodor, where tragic, Sturm und Drang splendor and French-style choral and balletic refinements were much embraced. Even so, the accent on dramatic impetus was all Mozart’s doing: taking a cue from the naturalistic theatrical reforms of Gluck, his recitatives were far less schematic and his arias less exhibitionist than in the conventional, hidebound opera seria of the period. 

Idomeneo’s long years of neglect can be attributed in part to its libretto, which was based on an obscure episode from Classical myth. The titular character, the ruler of Crete, is shipwrecked while returning home from the Trojan War. Entreating the sea god Neptune to deliver him from the tempest, Idomeneo vows to sacrifice the first individual he encounters on dry land. When he finally drops anchor in Crete, the king is welcomed by none other than his grown son Idamante, whom he does not initially recognize (the siege of Troy, we will recall, lasted a full decade). The rest of the opera treats the fallout from this peripeteia—Idomeneo, naturally enough, has second thoughts—with significant roles allotted to Princess Ilia, a Trojan prisoner of war, and the scheming Elettra of Argos (yes, that Electra). And though the scenario’s dramatic stakes appear immediate enough, it has nevertheless occasioned much special pleading, such as that of conductor Boris Goldovsky, who directed Idomeneo’s first American performance at Tanglewood in 1947. 

Thoroughly “symphonic” in bearing, the vigorous, statuesque overture leads straightaway into the first scene, which is given over to Ilia, who laments her captivity while giving vent to conflicted feelings of attraction for Idamante. Her opening recitative, “Quando avi an fine,” illustrates Mozart’s knack for minute shadings of characterization, alternating easily between spare secco phrases and more elaborate accompanied passages. It is elided with the following aria, “Padre, germani, addio” (“Father, brothers, farewell”) expresses Ilia’s ambivalence over being in love with her nation’s enemy in what is but one example of Idomeneo artfully covering up the seams between numbers. 

From a note by MATTHEW MENDEZ 

Matthew Mendez is a musicologist, critic, and annotator who was the 2014 Tanglewood Music Center Publications Fellow. He was the recipient of a 2016 ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for outstanding music journalism.