Monday, March 27, 2017

Met Opera: James Levine Conducts Idomeneo

On Saturday afternoon I went to the Met Opera to hear a rare performance of an opera seria, Mozart's Idomeneo, conducted by the company's Music Director Emeritus James Levine.  It was Mr. Levine who first brought this opera to the Met when it premiered there in 1982 and he has been a champion of the work ever since.

The great irony behind Idomeneo is that its composer, who with this work brought opera seria to its greatest heights, was the same who would a few years later put an effective end to the genre with the first of his Da Ponte operas, Le nozze di Figaro.  The present work was premiered in 1781, pursuant to a commission from the Elector Karl Theodor, at a court carnival in Munich.  Though Western Europe was already in a state of unrest as a result of the principles set forth by the Enlightenment (in Germany referred to as Aufklärung), few who attended that first performance could have foretold that in only a few years the French Revolution would have put a violent finish to Europe's status quo.  Still less could they have known that when the French monarchy fell an entire way of life would disappear with it, including such aristocratic pastimes as attending opera seria.  Even the very office of Elector that had existed for almost a millennium and was now embodied by Karl Theodor would vanish once Napoleon had put an end once and for all to the Holy Roman Empire.

If one quality characterized opera seria it was its deliberate rejection of the real world in favor of an idealized  mythical past.  The libretti, written by such renowned poets as Metastasio, dealt with subjects taken from classical antiquity or Greek mythology with protagonists who were invariably of noble birth.  There were no tragic endings because the spirit of the genre mandated that the virtuous be rewarded and the wicked punished.  The music itself was a holdover of Baroque forms as could be heard in recitatives that were accompanied by the traditional continuo of cello and harpsichord.  As for the arias, opera seria was distinguished by the prominence given to castrati singers who were given at least one major role in each production.

Though some musical reforms had already been accomplished as early as the 1760's by composers such as Gluck, the form given Mozart for his first major opera followed the archaic Metastasian model right down to the deus ex machina ending.  The librettist, Giambattista Varesco, was the Salzburg court chaplain and as thoroughly conservative as one would expect of a man in his position.  Admitting to Mozart that he had "not the slightest knowledge or experience of the theatre," Varesco worked from a French text that was already some seventy years old by the time he set about adapting it.

Six years then before he began his collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte, a far more innovative and congenial collaborator (even if one of Metastasio's greatest admirers), Mozart faced the challenge of breathing life into a moribund musical drama whose plot must already have appeared to his audience hopelessly out of date.  In order to accomplish this, Mozart constantly demanded changes from Varesco to the extent that the latter insisted on publishing his original libretto separately.  As Varesco had stayed behind in Salzburg rather than travel to Munich, Mozart's father was enlisted as an intermediary between the two and sought to be as diplomatic as possible in persuading Varesco to alter the libretto whenever necessary to suit the music.  The correspondence between Mozart and his father has survived and provides a great deal of insight into the musical problems the composer faced.  Though he was still only age 25 and relatively inexperienced, Mozart showed in his letters a profound understanding of the dynamics involved in successfully staging a full length opera.

One advantage Mozart possessed was the presence in Munich of the superb Mannheim Orchestra, at the time unquestionably the finest ensemble in Europe.  As a result, he was able to make use of clarinets in his orchestration and had available trombones and horns to mark the power of the final scene at the temple.  Beyond this, he was able to employ at least some of the innovations Gluck had introduced - Mozart had attended performances of Gluck's operas while visiting Paris - to overcome the stiff formality of opera seria.

In the end, Mozart created a masterpiece, a work that overcame the limitations of the form in which it was written to create characters who breathe and feel and who are above all able to attract the sympathies of the audience.  Idomeneo not only stands on its own as a great opera but looks ahead to the far more advanced works Mozart was only shortly thereafter to create with Da Ponte.  And that's what makes seeing this work so exciting.   

Saturday afternoon's performance was superb.  James Levine has demonstrated over and over again that he is the one of the world's foremost interpreters of Mozart, and he did so again on this occasion as he brought to life the composer's first great operatic masterpiece.  He was supported by a fine cast.  Matthew Polenzani stood out in the title role but it was Elza van den Heever, whom I can't remember ever having heard before, who stole the show in her final Act III aria as Elettra.

The original 1982 production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle has stood the test of time very well.  Though it's monochromatic coloring makes it appear drab, it's workmanlike and much less ostentatious than more recent Met productions.

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