Opera Review: Altar'ed States

Matthew Polenzani takes on Idomeneo at the Met.

by Paul J. Pelkonen

Idomeneo (Matthew Polenzani, left) contemplates sacrificing his son Idamante (Alice Coote, kneeling) in Act III of Mozart's Idomeneo.  Photo  by Marty Sohl Copyright 2017 The Metropolitan Opera.

James Levine, the Metropolitan Opera’s music director emeritus continued his tour of the great Mozart operas on Monday night with this season’s first revival of Idomeneo. This staging of the 1781 opera seria featured a cast of singers that have been groomed and nurtured under Mr. Levine's hand. Last night, the most notable of these was tenor Matthew Polenzani. He sang the title role, a part essayed on the big Met stage by both Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo in decades past.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Idomeneo

Power, mystery and a gigantic sea monster in Mozart's drama.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The supernatural climax of Mozart's Idomeneo.
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2006 The Metropolitan Opera.

Matthew Polenzani takes on the title role in Mozart's challening drama, an opera seria thar chronicles the trials and tribulations of a Cretan king who returns from the Trojan War only to find out that the gods demand a sacrifice: his only son.

Opera Review: Sea Change

René Jacobs offers a fresh take on Mozart's Idomeneo.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Conductor René Jacobs led the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra in Mozart's Idomeneo
in a concert performance Thursday night at Mostly Mozart. Photo by Joseph Molina
courtesy Lincoln Center Press Department.

It is rare to attend a performance with the potential to revamp an entire city's attitude toward a great but neglected piece of classical music. On Thursday night at Alice Tully Hall, the Mostly Mozart Festival welcomed historically informed performance expert and conductor René Jacobs, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Arnold Schoenberg Choir and a strong cast of lesser-known soloists, most of them in their Mostly Mozart Festival debuts. Their job: a concert performance of Idomeneo, the no-foolin' three-act operatic masterpiece that Mozart wrote at the age of 25.

The Mozart Project: Idomeneo, Re di Creta

Sense, sensibility and yes, sea monsters in Mozart's mythic drama.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Image from the 1955 Ray Harryhausen picture It Came From Beneath the Sea.
© 1955 Clover Productions Incorporated.

In the year 1780, when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 24 years old, he accepted a commission from the Elector of Bavaria to write a new opera for Carnival season the following year. The result was Idomeneo, re di Creta, his thirteenth opera and the earliest of his stage creations to retain a place in the standard repertory of the world's opera houses. Sprawling over three acts, this is a work of exceptional musical ambition and challenge to its performers, as it was created for the formidable orchestra and cast that were at the Elector's disposal.

CD Review: Pavarotti in Idomeneo from 1964

The classic recording from Glyndebourne finally comes to light.
by Paul Pelkonen

EEK! What's that?

In 1964, Luciano Pavarotti was an up-and-coming tenor, just beginning to be heard outside of his native Italy. He was three years into his career when he sang the the role of Idamante at the Glyndebourne Festival. The performances were crucial to exposing the singer to English audiences, not to mention acquainting him with the Mozart opera that he would be associated with later in his career, when he would take on (and record) the more demanding title role.

This recording is the document of those performances. It finds the young Pavarotti in top form. He might be a little raw in spots, but that could also be the fault of the sound quality. The power, range and flexibilty of his instrument are all present, along with that rich, orotund sound that the world fell in love with. Listening to this set, one gets the sense of a young man on his way up, about to conquer the world.


The rest of the cast is incredibly strong. Gundula Janowitz soars as Ilia. She's only 27 here, and the great Karajan recordings were in her future. Like Pavarotti, she was heading for bigger things. Tenor Richard Lewis is strong in the role of Idomeneo, a part which Pavarotti would take on later in his career when his voice had matured a bit. John Pritchard leads a skilful, light-footed performance, conducting from the keyboard.

It should be noted that this recording does not hold up as an ideal first choice for Idomeneo. The performers are using an edited edition of the score which hurts the work's dramatic flow and omits the ballet music. And the live-recorded sound is occasionally thin, as if the microphones were sometimes in the wrong place. However, this is a valuable document and a great performance. It's also a must for Pavarotti fans who want to hear what their hero sounded like when he was just starting out.