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- [00:13]
Pat Wright
Welcome to another edition of Opera for Everyone. I'm your host, Pat Wright, and I am thrilled today to introduce you to a new guest co host on Opera for Everyone, Gerald Malone. Gerald is someone who has a lifelong passion for opera. He is the opera critic for Reaction Life, an online publication and he is also a director of the Metropolitan Opera Club. Welcome, Gerald.
- [00:38]
Gerald Malone
Well, and never more pleased to be anywhere than to be here with you, Pat, because you are a familiar voice, I think I've listened. I've counted up 94 of your opera for Everyone.
- [00:51]
Pat Wright
I may have to give you an award.
- [00:52]
Gerald Malone
Well, I hope to take it home with me from Wyoming. It's a fabulous series and I'm delighted to be here. Thank you very much for asking me.
- [01:01]
Pat Wright
Oh, I'm so glad you're here. We have had lovely conversations, the two of us, about opera. Different time periods.
- [01:08]
Gerald Malone
Un general.
- [01:09]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes. Different places. And you travel a lot to see opera.
- [01:14]
Gerald Malone
Yeah, and I travel a lot in America as well. Because you find opera in unusual places. I'm just back from Des Moines where Des Moines Metro Opera had a fantastic festival. I'm also back from Glimmer Glass, where that was superb out in the country in a magic property on Lake Otsego. And of course, I spent a lot of my time at the Met in New York. So opera takes you right across America and you find jewels buried everywhere.
- [01:41]
Pat Wright
It's so true. I'm always recommending to our listeners, after you listen to an opera for everyone, go see if you can find that opera somewhere, or vice versa. If there's an opera playing near you, find the Opera for Everyone episode where we discuss that opera and you will get so much more enjoyment, I believe, out of the opera.
- [01:59]
Gerald Malone
And it's such a pleasure to be here where the Grand Teton Music Festival is also doing an opera, the Magic Flute. I wish I had been here to actually see it. But sadly it'll have to wait for another occasion.
- [02:12]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes, this is summer of 2024 and the magic Flute is their opera at the end of their season. And they are making a habit of doing an opera at the end of each and every season, which is magnificent. I mean, their symphonic music is wonderful, as is the opera and the singers that they bring in. So we're very lucky here. Please come visit us in Wyoming any time of year. It's beautiful. But we do have some nice music.
- [02:38]
Gerald Malone
In the summer and see my old friend Sir Donald Bunacles, who used to run the BBC Scott Symphony Orchestra when I was but a lad.
- [02:47]
Pat Wright
Oh my. Well, yeah, he is beloved here, no question, as our music director for the Grand Teton Music Festival. Well, I think it's time to introduce the opera that you and I are going to discuss today. We are going to spend some time with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the opera that is often called his first fully mature and truly successful opera. And I am so glad that it came up in one of our conversations as the perfect opera for us to spend some time with. This is a very interesting piece and an interesting piece in terms of opera history.
- [03:24]
Gerald Malone
Well, it is, because until I, Domineo, Mozart had written a number of operas. Some of them were pretty short, some of them were pretty foolish. I think the Goose of Cairo wins the prize, where a magic goose showers gold on top of people in Egypt and people are released from prison. But this commission, he had gone hard after.
- [03:45]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [03:45]
Gerald Malone
And when he got it, he used the opportunity to make this the first of what would then become a series of operas when he moved into the Da Ponte operas that were so successful, in which we all remember today. But this is the numero uno.
- [04:00]
Pat Wright
Yeah. The first one that really kicked off his successful adult career. And just as a reminder, the Da Ponte operas you refer to are names that people might be familiar with.
- [04:10]
Gerald Malone
Well, you're a bit more familiar, I think, with the Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan Tutti, then you would be with a Domineo. But don't write a Domineo off, as you and I are about to discover. It's a hugely exciting opera that I think people will enjoy.
- [04:26]
Pat Wright
Right, right. This is not necessarily the first opera that springs to people's minds, but there's so much delectable music and powerful dramatic storytelling in Idomeneo.
- [04:39]
Gerald Malone
Well, it's an amazing story because it goes back to the sort of the Abraham and Isaac story about somebody who makes a plan with the gods and suddenly discovers that they've agreed to kill the first person that they see who turns out to be their son. So you really cannot get a more exciting plot line than that.
- [05:00]
Pat Wright
Yes, it is ripe for drama and for emotion, but it's important to remember that at this point in time, it was very risky or plain forbidden to do biblical topics head on. So you could always take something from ancient mythology. And a lot of our early operas are based on the characters in Greek and Roman mythology.
- [05:23]
Gerald Malone
Yes, they are. Slight change in that. For Handel, when he had Jephthah do it, that was a biblical story and that was round about the same time. But here Mozart also had to Be very careful about who was paying for this, who was the elector in Munich and elector of Bavaria. And he had to be very careful not to offend the court. And this is a highly political opera because it is based on the principles of the Enlightenment. And we end up in this opera with the king being deposed, which was pretty risky.
- [05:54]
Pat Wright
It is risky, but it's not a popular uprise. No spoilers in opera. It's not a popular uprising that deposes him. A little deus ex machina that allows that to happen.
- [06:04]
Gerald Malone
Well, there is a deus ex machina, but there's also a crowd beginning to be a little bit annoyed at the fact that Idomeneo has conjured up a sea monster that seems to be eating them and leaving them devastated in the streets. This is not a good policy.
- [06:18]
Pat Wright
No, no. Well, I think we're giving a few tidbits of what is to come in this story and perhaps we could talk about how this opera opens. How does Idomeneo?
- [06:32]
Gerald Malone
Well, absolutely, because we start off with a lady, Ilia, who is from Troy, who has been taken prisoner because the Trojan wars went badly for the Trojans. Greeks, seven Trojans nil. And she has been carted off to Crete. And she is a prisoner. And there are many Trojans with her who are prisoners. And she is singing an aria and a recitative. When will my bitter misfortunes end? And there she is. It's unusual to start off with somebody who is not the driving character. But of course, Ilia, the princess turns out to be the soul of this opera.
- [07:12]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [07:13]
Gerald Malone
And that is an important development, part of her character. And I think Mozart was flagging this up right at the beginning. Here is the woman that you have to listen to because she is the victim, but unfortunately, she happens to have fallen in love with her captor, who is Idomeneo's son, Idamante.
- [07:32]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes.
- [07:33]
Gerald Malone
Well, it happens. You know, hostage Stockholm syndrome was happening in Crete at this time. Idomeneo, the king is absent. He's probably been lost at sea. People don't know.
- [07:46]
Pat Wright
Yeah, he's one of these characters like Odysseus, for example, who takes time to get to back home from Troy after the Trojan War is won by the Greeks. It's interesting because there's so much that goes on with the these. They're more homecoming stories, it almost seems to me, in Greek mythology of the men coming home from the Trojan War than the Trojan War itself.
- [08:11]
Gerald Malone
I think Idomeneo had booked the wrong ferry on Expedia and he had been sidetracked with about 14 other journeys. He's absent. His son Adamante is ruling in his absence.
- [08:25]
Pat Wright
A son who was but a babe or young, very young when he died.
- [08:29]
Gerald Malone
This is an important point, Pat, because they had forgotten each other essentially. They hadn't seen each other for years. I mean, they had remembered that they were father and son, but they hadn't seen each other for a long time. And Idamante was in charge of the policy. And his policy became to free the Trojans, which was quite disputatious. It was at the time.
- [08:51]
Pat Wright
However, before we get to the freed Trojans and we will hear from them, let's hear a little bit of Ilia. From the beginning, when you say Mozart is signaling to us what an important character Ilia is. She is, after all, the daughter of King Priam and she's been brought as a. As a prisoner to Crete.
- [09:11]
Gerald Malone
And perhaps she's fallen in love with Adamanti.
- [09:14]
Pat Wright
Yeah, that's. That's not sitting well in her mind. And she lets us know about that.
- [09:19]
Gerald Malone
Right up front, right at the beginning.
- [10:05]
Ilia
R.A. i.
- [11:39]
Pat Wright
That was Ilia, the captive Trojan princess on Crete in Mozart's Idomeneo. And she is suffering. She feels terrible. Her homeland has been defeated. Her brothers, her father have all been killed. And here she is on Crete finding herself in love with the young man in charge. By the way, these are Both Ilia and 1920, 21. They're young and ripe for love.
- [12:09]
Gerald Malone
They are. And her job is made a little bit easier, however, by the fact that Idamante decides to free all the Trojans. This does make loving him not such a bad thing.
- [12:22]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes, a little bit of that enlightenment ideology creeping in here with this benevolent, enlightened ruler.
- [12:30]
Gerald Malone
Yeah. And we'll find that that actually stretches through the opera because it is about enlightenment and at the end of the day, that human love and spirit is far more important than the dictates of politicians. And even gods.
- [12:45]
Pat Wright
And even gods.
- [12:46]
Gerald Malone
Even gods.
- [12:47]
Pat Wright
Yeah, that's true. Well, Adamante arrives on the scene with this glorious news as far as she's concerned. And it feels right to him as well. And partially, we think he's doing it out of his love for her.
- [13:01]
Gerald Malone
No, you think he's got some self interest here. I mean, hello there, I love you. I think I'll free your people. It's quite a good line.
- [13:09]
Pat Wright
It is, it is. And she's very happy about it. It does not displease her in the least.
- [13:15]
Gerald Malone
No. And also Idamante also takes the view that, well, I've fallen in love. So I'm going to do what I like. I'm the boss just now because my.
- [13:24]
Pat Wright
Dad'S not here and it's been some time. He still believes the father is going to make it back home, but he's not there yet.
- [13:33]
Gerald Malone
Well, they must know that he's at some risk having taken so long to return and being effectively lost.
- [13:42]
Pat Wright
Right. Well, we know because of the title of the opera, he is going to show up at some point, but for the moment, Irmonte is in charge. He's made this beneficent decision and I think we should hear him a little bit singing about his love for her, that it's not my fault, I adore you.
- [14:05]
Gerald Malone
Yes, we should, because it emphasizes that love covers everything. Yes, and even his sense of duty. And I suppose people who listen to this will think, well, he's actually been driven by self interest to do this great act of charity to the Trojans. But so what? The Trojans are free. They're very happy.
- [14:26]
Pat Wright
That's right. And here they are on his land, their city's been destroyed. And later we're going to hear Ilia talking about how she's adopted Crete as her homeland. Anyway, but before we hear a little bit of Idamante singing, we need to let people know about the voice you will hear Adamante singing with.
- [14:44]
Gerald Malone
Well, when we hear Adamante, we've also got to remember that it's being sung as a trouser roll via mezzo soprano. Sometimes it is sung by a tenor and in fact, oddly enough, it was sung in one recording by Luciano Pavarotti, who will be the idomeneo in this recording. So, you know, trouser role, schmauser, roll. It all changes from time to time, but here we're hearing from Agnes Bolzer, who is a mezzo and who is fortunately Greek. So she is essentially coming home. And trouser roles were very significant in those days and Mozart continued them throughout. You Carabino in the Marriage of Figaro. Trouser roles like that, where mezzos sang the roles of males.
- [15:34]
Pat Wright
But Carabino, as I understand it, was written as a trouser role. Idamante was written as a soprano castrato.
- [15:43]
Gerald Malone
Yes, it was, but everybody just varies the pace according to which singer is available to do it at the time.
- [15:49]
Pat Wright
That's right. Even Mozart, he wanted a full production in Vienna. That didn't happen. It was more of an amateur production in a private theater. Five years later, in 1786, this small production, he transposed the role of Edamante So that Idamante was sung by a tenor in Mozart's day, so it's not unheard of. Though today, most of the productions that we see, we have a soprano singing the role. It's also possible that a countertenor could sing the role.
- [16:18]
Gerald Malone
You're drawing attention to an important point, that these things are never cast in stone. Right. I think a lot of people who love opera and our experts think they should be. But the truth of the matter is that Mozart was always responding to what was necessary at the time to accommodate a performance. To make it effective, he would use the tools of the best people that he had on hand. He would even trim and chop areas to make sure that they fitted the voices of the singers that he could command. And we've got to be very careful that these things are not biblical stones that are being handed down from the mountain that we should never change. It does change according to the circumstance.
- [16:59]
Pat Wright
And need it does. And who you've got available. I think it gives directors and people mounting these productions a little more freedom to feel it's okay when the composer himself has made some of the changes during their lifetime.
- [17:16]
Gerald Malone
Yes. And Mozart was changing this opera right up to the moment that it was performed because he discovered that some of the singers were unable to act and so he cut their roles. He had to be very careful about the role of a domineo because in an opera seria, a domineo would normally be expected to rush off. But Mozart changed that and had him remain on stage, which is why this opera is a transition from the old opera seria to. To the other generation of operas that he wrote with Da Ponte and Domineo, had to be a bit of an actor. And he was very disappointed that his chosen character was not.
- [17:58]
Pat Wright
Yes, the Adomineo, the original Adomineo, was older, little further along in his career. And Mozart had to adapt the role for him.
- [18:09]
Gerald Malone
Well, he adapted it in a very friendly way because he had worked with the singer for many, many years and he understood the weaknesses. And he decided to adapt rather than to force the singer to do something that wouldn't be good for the audience. Because Mozart always had in his head the overall impact of what was happening. And if that meant that he had to change what he had written in music or in the way it was presented, then so be it. All this was for the audience.
- [18:38]
Pat Wright
Oh, the correspondence that he writes with his father. We're very lucky that we have a lot of this to hand.
- [18:45]
Gerald Malone
It's the only opera that we have all this correspondence to hand.
- [18:48]
Pat Wright
What a treat.
- [18:49]
Gerald Malone
And, you know, they chatted between each other. Leopold and Mozart were chattering away with each other all the time about how this should be adapted, how it should be changed. And the comment that Mozart made about Anton Raff, who was the singer who did Domineo, was really quite telling. And he helped Raff along so that he could be able to perform. And he shortened phrases, all of these things to make it accommodating.
- [19:15]
Pat Wright
Well, and to make the opera more successful. Let's return to Idamante. I'd love for us to hear a little bit of Idamante's piece here. Be aware this is a mezzo soprano voice that you are hearing, but it is our male romantic.
- [19:35]
Ilia
Sa.
- [21:28]
Pat Wright
That was the young Prince Edamante in Mozart's Idomeneo. And Idamante is so in love with Ilia, the Trojan princess, that he has freed and he has freed all of her people. He even is so in love, he offers to kill himself because he sees her grief at the loss of her father, her brothers and so many of her country people.
- [21:54]
Gerald Malone
But he also doesn't blame himself for doing the wrong thing in everybody else's eyes. It's a strange thing that he falls in love with Ilia, but as so many of these characters do, he blames the gods in that area we've just heard.
- [22:07]
Pat Wright
Oh, the gods are very important in this tale.
- [22:10]
Gerald Malone
Terrific. I wish we'd gods nowadays. It would be so much easier to blame them.
- [22:15]
Pat Wright
Well, yeah, they definitely intervene here in this story. Well, we have a chance for a little bit of happiness after all of this lamentation, when the Trojans are freed and we have the Trojans and the people of Crete on stage, which is full of our whole chorus at this point. And the chorus is going to get to say how happy they are with the way things are going.
- [22:40]
Gerald Malone
And this is genuinely new because it wasn't common for choruses to appear like this in opera Serie A. And they were usually off stage. They weren't up front. And Mozart brought them up front. And he also wrote choral music, which I think is on a par with anything else that he wrote in his career for this opera. It's astonishingly beautiful. And the significant thing for the plot here is that the Trojans and the Cretans are actually singing together. They were at war, one lot were prisoners. And now they are allies, which will be important later on as we get towards the denouement.
- [23:22]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes, they are celebrating the fact that they can put essentially their hostilities behind Them in most productions you literally see the chains or whatever binds them being loosed and removed.
- [23:36]
Gerald Malone
Yes. And it's interesting that the lesson from this opera was taken by many other composers, most notably, I think Beethoven and Fidelio where the most telling part of that opera. And Beethoven wasn't great at writing operas, frankly.
- [23:51]
Pat Wright
Well, he just has the one.
- [23:52]
Gerald Malone
He just has the one. And there's a reason for that. But the bit about it that is undisputably fantastic is the prisoner's chorus where they emerge into the light. And I think that this, this chorus is a forerunner of that because everybody picks off everybody else in music. You listen to the generation before and you take it on. And in this case, this was genuinely new. And so Mozart set in motion a trend that would have an enormous impact on the genre.
- [24:23]
Pat Wright
Right. We should mention Mozart himself, who was only 24 as he's writing this opera and received the commission. We say it was long awaited. But Mozart had been a prodigy. I think most people, a lot of people have seen the movie Amadeus and have some visions in their head. A little skewed.
- [24:39]
Gerald Malone
Well, I mean, I never toured a foreign country at the age of five to play the piano right in front of monarchs, in front of monarchs, in front of anybody. I wasn't even allowed to do it in my own drawing room. So yes, he was a prodigy and he had until this moment composed certainly quite a lot of music, but not much of it was published. And this was his opportunity to get something that would make him really notice, put him on the map. And he also wanted to move out of Salzburg where he was fed up being in the hands of the archbishop, where he was contracted and he wanted to go to Munich. The best music in the world was being played at that time with the best orchestra because the elector had stolen the orchestra from Mannheim, which was the best when he was made the elector in Bavaria and off he went and made the best opera house on the planet.
- [25:31]
Pat Wright
Yeah, so we should mention elector because we keep referring to. It's elector Carl Theodore. And an elector is a highly placed ruler.
- [25:42]
Gerald Malone
He's the boss.
- [25:43]
Pat Wright
He's the boss.
- [25:43]
Gerald Malone
In other territories we would have thought of the elector as the king. Effectively. Yeah, they were a ruler.
- [25:48]
Pat Wright
The ruler, the guy in charge. And Mozart, to your point, about using from other people and taking ideas from other people. Because even at the age of 24, Mozart was very well traveled. He had been to London, he had spent time in Paris, he had spent time in Italy. He had learned all these different styles and he knew he was Doing some things that were French and some things that were German. Gluck, an important person in opera history, had theories about how opera should not be necessarily as bound by recitative, aria, recitative, aria, and really had ideas to improve the dramatic impact. And Mozart was all about improving the dramatic impact.
- [26:37]
Gerald Malone
Well, he was. And he also stole. I'm glad you mentioned Gluck, because if you listen to the march in Domineo, you will hear that it is stolen from Orfeo. Absolutely. And it is quite remarkable. And then he also reused it for Cherubino in the Marriage of Figaro. And you can just hear that line of continuity running through all that music.
- [27:02]
Pat Wright
Well, we'll have to make sure we play a little bit of that march when we get there, story wise. But now let's hear a little bit of this choral piece with the Trojans and the Cretans rejoicing in. Well, the Trojans rejoicing in their freedom and the Cretans rejoicing in peace.
- [27:22]
Gerald Malone
And of course, it's a lead up to fury.
- [27:25]
Pat Wright
Well, we'll change mood soon enough.
- [27:47]
Ilia
Sa.
- [29:06]
Pat Wright
The Trojans are happy, the Cretans are happy, everything's wonderful. And we will turn to the fury that you mentioned. But before we do, I just want to take a moment to say that Idomeneo, Idomeneus, not necessarily familiar to certainly every American school child who studied Greek mythology. It's not as familiar in name, but he is part of the fundamental story of these Greeks returning from the Trojan War. We've got this Ilia, who is the daughter of Priam the king, who's the father of Paris and of Hector, and he is part of the mythology. But I will tell you, three books on mythology I have on my bookshelf in my library. He's not mentioned.
- [29:54]
Gerald Malone
No. And he was part of an alliance with the Greeks. You've got to remember that Greece was made up of a number of principalities and Crete was one of them. So they were allied to the Greeks and Idomeneo went off to help them, but with all the changing names. And we'll come to this a bit more. When it comes to Electra, they were not written into opera in exactly the same sequence as even the mythology, let alone real time history. So people played around with that to suit themselves. So it's unsurprising that people haven't heard of them.
- [30:27]
Pat Wright
Right. We could mention right now the fact that the librettist for this opera, he's an abbe. He's a clergyman, Giovanni Battista Varesco and Mozart Worked back and forth with him very intensely to get the drama just right. Although he's the librettist, he is not the originator of this story in any way. He is reworking a libretto from a French opera. Y Domine.
- [30:53]
Gerald Malone
Doncher was the composer.
- [30:54]
Pat Wright
That's right. And it was one of these things he found on his travels, this libretto. And this was not uncommon at all, by the way. Librettos were reproduced way more often as operas than the music itself. A same libretto could be set by any number of composers. And that's one of the librettos Mozart got a hold of when he was in Paris. And then he finds this librettist, or someone finds this librettist for him to rework it. But it itself was based on a play that a Frenchman had written. So it's, you know, and based on Greek myth and so on and so on. So none of this is made up.
- [31:29]
Gerald Malone
Out of thin air, to put it mildly. Copyright was not as well developed in those days as it is now. And in fact, it's interesting that copyright and music never actually took hold until the Ricordi Company was founded by the Italians in the middle of the 19th century. And they began to make sure that you couldn't just go and pick up somebody's libretto and do what you liked with it. But because operas weren't performed more than two or three times, you weren't going to get a series of the same one spread across Europe. You pinched the libretto, took it somewhere else. Why not capitalize on a good idea? That's what everybody did.
- [32:06]
Pat Wright
Yes, and in fact, it was funny. One of the books I was reading in preparation for this talked about the fact that Mozart himself would likely be very surprised that this many years later, we are talking about this opera and people are still performing it.
- [32:20]
Gerald Malone
It was buried long before he even started to do the de Ponty operas. Yes, and he would have thought it was probably written off. He'd be thrilled if was here today.
- [32:29]
Pat Wright
Yeah, well, we'd be thrilled if he was here today, too. All right, back to Greek mythology. Electra. That is a name I think a lot of people are familiar with. Electra, as the daughter of King Agamemnon. Would you want to fill us in on who she is?
- [32:46]
Gerald Malone
Well, I can't quite work out why Domineo was so keen to have her in Crete. She is the house guest from hell.
- [32:53]
Pat Wright
She is.
- [32:54]
Gerald Malone
Hello. Please come and visit us. I know you've just murdered your mother, who in turn murdered your father, and that you're on the run. And I have heard that you've got something of a touchy temper.
- [33:06]
Pat Wright
Yes. It's not entirely clear that Elektra was invited by Adamante to come live in Crete, but there she is. It doesn't matter. We don't need an explanation. She is there and we know she has left her homeland after the tragedies that have occurred with Agamemnon's homecoming.
- [33:24]
Gerald Malone
This is not uncommon at Christmas. Quite often guests turn up that you don't expect. And I think Elektra probably did that. And what is even worse is that she wanted to marry Idamante and she fell in love with them. But of course he did not fall in love with her. So trouble.
- [33:43]
Pat Wright
Great deal of trouble. But she has a high opinion of herself. She thinks she's entitled to quite a lot being a princess, the daughter of a king. And she is Greek, after all. And her very Greekness is what is going to come out in the beginning. Because she is furious. There's that fury you mentioned. She is furious that Idamante has taken this action to free the former foes or the foes in her thoughts. The foes of the Greeks. How can you free the Trojans? The Trojans killed Greeks.
- [34:20]
Gerald Malone
Electra is not at all interested in the Trojans. She's interested in herself, Elektra. And what she sees is she's got a smither of an idea that he might actually fancy Ilia quite a bit. And that this is a track into Ilia and she sees her position as being undermined. So that is why she is furious. She's totally consumed by self interest.
- [34:44]
Pat Wright
Right? She is. Well, let's hear her express a little bit of that fury.
- [34:49]
Gerald Malone
Well, a rage area. And this is the first one that we'll be hearing today. There will be more. And really, Mozart became an expert in rage areas. Listeners are probably more familiar with the Queen of the Night and the Magic Flute.
- [35:04]
Pat Wright
Oh, that's a good one.
- [35:05]
Gerald Malone
This is the precursor upon which they're all built. And they are blindingly wonderful.
- [37:24]
Ilia
K.
- [38:08]
Pat Wright
That was Elektra. She is furious. And there's nothing like a good rage. Arya. But we're going to change scenes now. This is scene two of act one. And we're on the sea coast and things are not peaceful.
- [38:24]
Gerald Malone
And maybe because we're near the sea. Is there going to be somebody arriving on the coast? And might it be Idomeneo?
- [38:34]
Pat Wright
It could very well be. But before Idomeneo is going to hold the stage, we have a wonderful transition piece by the chorus.
- [38:44]
Gerald Malone
It is about time he turned up however, because he is the title of the opera.
- [38:48]
Pat Wright
He is the title of the opera and he's the unseen force that everyone's responding to. But this chorus on the shore is terribly afraid because they see that there is turmoil in the seas, it's not going well.
- [39:06]
Gerald Malone
And there is a risk that a domineo will be drowned.
- [39:10]
Pat Wright
Right, because we have been told that Idomeneo's ships have been sighted, so they know that their king is approaching, but it looks awfully dangerous for him.
- [39:21]
Gerald Malone
And as a weather storm.
- [39:22]
Pat Wright
Yes. And we have a distant chorus that responds to the onshore chorus, asking the gods for mercy for their salvation.
- [39:31]
Gerald Malone
Let's see how it works out. That clip ended with the chorus nearby saying, ye gods, have mercy. Pitiless fate thrusts us into the arms of dreadful death. But it doesn't, because Neptune suddenly appears. Yes, where he doesn't actually in the opera. He's off stage, but he signs to the winds to withdraw to their caves. The sea calms, the weather's better, it's all going to work out. And Idomeneo appears. He has been saved. But what we don't know at this stage is that to pay off Neptune, he's had to make a pledge, a.
- [40:53]
Pat Wright
Bargain, a vow that he may come to regret. In fact, he regrets it even before he knows how badly it's going to play out.
- [41:01]
Gerald Malone
When he arrives, his first words are, we are here, safe at last. But he knows in his mind that he has made a bargain with the devil. It's almost like Faust and Mephistopheles. It's the same sort of thing. Operas love bargains with the devil. And in this case, Neptune, though he's a God, is insisting on something appalling. He has insisted that a domineo kill the first person that he meets on reaching the shore. Now, there's a lesson in this. If you're holidaying on the Jersey coast, be very careful of people who come out of the water and approach you. You never know what pact they have made with the devil.
- [41:40]
Pat Wright
No, you never do. An opera loves, particularly at this point when it was common, expected to have these elevated personages as the focus of your opera. They love to put rulers into a moral dilemma.
- [41:56]
Gerald Malone
That was the resolution that they were seeking. And the whole point of the opera is how is this person, who has got a lot of power going to resolve these issues at the end of the day? And that is where we will get to at the end of this opera, where it is resolved.
- [42:13]
Pat Wright
But here he knows what pact he's made. And he lets us know that he is responsible for a human sacrifice. He has promised that his safe emergence onto the shore along with his men on the boat. It's at the price of a human sacrifice that he has promised to Neptune, this first person he sees.
- [42:35]
Gerald Malone
And he immediately regrets it because he knows it's not the right thing to do. But little does he know who it is he is going to meet.
- [42:43]
Pat Wright
That is true. Let's get a little sense of this character Idomeneo, as he's on the shore dripping wet with seawater. That was Idomeneo, the title character in Mozart's first mature opera, the one that we hopefully get to see more and more of. That is Idomeneo himself on the shores, regretting the bargain he made with Neptune to arrive safely, but being glad he is safe on the shore. We should mention that prior to him arriving safely on the shore, his demise was announced to all by the chief counselor Arbache, who lets us know that what Mars, the God of war, couldn't do, in other words, couldn't kill him. Neptune has killed him. Now of course that doesn't happen because the sea is calmed by Neptune because of this terrible bargain that Idomeneo has made. But people still think there's a good chance that while some sailors may have washed up on shore, Idomeneo is dead. And Idamante, Idomeneus son, is rushing to see what assistance he can give to any sailors who wash up on shore.
- [45:27]
Gerald Malone
Well, he goes to see what is amid the remnants of the wrecks.
- [45:31]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [45:32]
Gerald Malone
And who has washed up.
- [45:33]
Pat Wright
Yes, and here's where we get to the piece that you warned us about, where the first person that Idomeneo sees is his son, looking to see if he can be of help to these shipwrecked sailors.
- [45:45]
Gerald Malone
And they have a bit of a chat. Yona Dimanti.
- [45:48]
Pat Wright
Well, of course he thinks he's just one of the men who survived this terrible storm on the boat. At first that's what he thinks, because of course Idomonte was very young when Idomeneo left for the war.
- [46:02]
Gerald Malone
And then Idomeneo says to Idamante that nobody is to be pitied more than Idomeneo in the third person.
- [46:11]
Pat Wright
He does.
- [46:12]
Gerald Malone
And Idamante says, what? Idomeneo is alive?
- [46:17]
Pat Wright
Yeah. Yes. And in a little bit of back and forth they are going to realize that they are father and son.
- [46:27]
Gerald Malone
Well, Idomeneo asks the not too stupid question, who are you?
- [46:32]
Pat Wright
Yes, fair enough.
- [46:33]
Gerald Malone
And Idamante says wearily, idomeneo, he is my father. And Idomeneo says most pitiless gods. Because he then knows at that moment that's another turning point in the opera.
- [46:47]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [46:47]
Gerald Malone
That he's going to have to kill his son, who he has just met on the show.
- [46:51]
Pat Wright
Yes, the gods are without pity. He realizes that this bargain, which he thought was awful for whatever human he encountered, it's of course his son.
- [47:01]
Gerald Malone
The other point is that he says it to himself. Idamante doesn't know this, tries to embrace him and is extremely worried when Idomeneo hurries away from him and says, I cannot be with you, and doesn't claim to have any love for him.
- [47:17]
Pat Wright
Yes, after all these years, father, what have I done? But he rejects him. He wants to be nowhere near him, because he doesn't want one of those God tricks to make him inadvertently jealous. God tricks.
- [47:30]
Gerald Malone
God tricks. And at my tender words, he abruptly flees. Adamanti has no idea why this is happening, but he understands there are more cruel misfortunes that yet await him.
- [47:42]
Pat Wright
Yes. Are you reminded at all of the. It's not the same. It doesn't play out at all the same way. But I immediately thought of Odysseus and Telemachus, when they are finally, finally reunited, when they recognize one another. The same period of history or mythology with the returning from the Trojan War, but a very different kind of homecoming.
- [48:03]
Gerald Malone
It's a great plot line, isn't it, for anybody who's writing an opera? Because it occupies 10, 15 minutes of total confusion amongst the characters, with the audience who know exactly who is whom, saying, come on, you idiots, can't you identify each other?
- [48:17]
Pat Wright
But it's completely understandable why they can't. He was too young. Edamante has grown up and he was a child. So of course he doesn't remember exactly what his father looks like, unless they're carbon copies, but clearly they are not.
- [48:30]
Gerald Malone
And he is destroyed by the fact that his father chooses to ignore him and chooses not to explain why. Well, you can understand why he wouldn't do that, son. Bad news is I've done a pact with Neptune and you're a goner. Not a very good welcome when you climb onto the beach.
- [48:47]
Pat Wright
No. And he keeps Idamante in the dark on this. And Idamante is just left to be sad and confused.
- [48:56]
Gerald Malone
He is my beloved father. I find him again only to lose him immediately. It is tragic.
- [50:21]
Pat Wright
Poor Adamante. He is suffering at the rejection from his father. In his sorrow he departs the stage and we have a little bit of change of atmosphere.
- [50:32]
Gerald Malone
We do. The sea is calm. We have an intermezzo. There's not much that's calm about this opera. And the Cretan troops who have arrived with Idomeneo, not surprisingly disembark. And everybody is absolutely thrilled. The Cretan women run up to embrace them. It's all a celebration. And what do we do in a celebration? We have a march and I beg you all to listen to the Marriage of Figaro and the march of Cherubino when he goes off to join the army. But it's the same thing. And now we have another wonderful chorus and it's fantastic music, fantastic sound. And what I think is interesting is that they would never have heard anything like this in Munich. So this was a real first. But the chorus is honoring Neptune, who has insisted on this terrible pact.
- [53:07]
Pat Wright
Well, they don't know that. They just know that the sea calmed. Thank you. Neptune and some of their countrymen have returned home.
- [53:14]
Gerald Malone
From afar, Neptune watches Jove's anger and in a moment descends to the sea's depths. And everything is all right when Neptune is in his royal seat. But it is self deception and it's all going to come back and haunt them shortly.
- [53:28]
Pat Wright
Yes, because they're going to soon learn that Neptune is not happy when things don't go the way that Neptune wants.
- [53:35]
Gerald Malone
And they end up. Let Neptune be honoured. Now let the trumpets sound. Let us go and prepare solemn sacrifice. But they don't know what the sacrifice is going to be.
- [53:47]
Pat Wright
No, they don't know that it's a person and who that person is.
- [53:50]
Gerald Malone
Exactly.
- [53:51]
Pat Wright
Well, this is going to close out the first act of this three act opera. Let's listen to a little bit of this. This is choral. There are some soloists. These are the people on land in Crete, happy that the sea has calmed and the men have arrived back home.
- [57:05]
Ilia
Naive. It.
- [58:23]
Arbace
You're listening to Opera for Everyone, a radio show and podcast that embraces drama and story through love of music. Opera for Everyone airs Sundays from 9 to 11am Mountain Time on 89.1 Khol Jackson, Wyoming's only community radio station. I'm your host Pat Wright, joined today by Gerald Malone. If you'd like to hear more conversations.
- [58:48]
Pat Wright
About opera, please join us on the.
- [58:51]
Arbace
Opera for Everyone podcast. And if you subscribe and rate us, you'll be helping with our mission to bring opera to everyone by helping others find this show.
- [59:01]
Pat Wright
Stay with us.
- [59:01]
Arbace
The second half of today's show is coming right up.
- [59:43]
Pat Wright
Welcome back to the second half of Opera for Everyone. I'm your host Pat Wright and today my guest co host is Gerald Malone. Gerald, as I mentioned in the beginning, is the opera critic for Reaction Life, an online publication. And he is also a director of the Metropolitan Opera Club. Gerald, welcome back.
- [60:02]
Gerald Malone
I'm thrilled to be here, Pat. Thoroughly enjoying the experience.
- [60:06]
Pat Wright
Likewise. I'm thrilled you're here. And we're having a lot of fun talking about this Mozart opera, Idomeneo. It's not one of the top ones that people think of, but it really ought to be.
- [60:18]
Gerald Malone
And the important point to get across, I think, to the audience is that this opera is fun, it's exciting, it's full of fascinating stories. Gods who do terrible things, people who make pacts with the devil, women who sing, rage areas. This is fun.
- [60:36]
Pat Wright
There's a lot of lamentation and rage that goes on. I don't think the characters are necessarily having fun all the time, but the audience is.
- [60:43]
Gerald Malone
The whole purpose of the opera is for the audience, as Mozart always made sure.
- [60:49]
Pat Wright
It was a lot of that correspondence that we referenced earlier between Mozart and his father who was in Salzburg, who worked with Weresco, the librettist, to tighten up the drama to make it a little better bit by bit as they made adjustments.
- [61:08]
Gerald Malone
Unusually, this is probably the best recorded instance we have of what happens in the run up to an opera where there's a lot of toing and froing with the librettist. Librettists in those days were considered to be more important than composers until Mozart came along. And what is unusual here is that Mozart was able to insist that that Vasco changed the libretto to fit his musical line. What we are looking at here is a geopolitical change in opera where the music became more important than the libretto. And that has followed on pretty much since. Probably the most important exponent of that was Wagner, for whom the music was everything. And he insisted on writing his own librettos. So Mozart kicked it off.
- [61:56]
Pat Wright
And in the case of Wagner, because he was his own librettist, he obviously had total control.
- [62:01]
Gerald Malone
Also bonkers. But never mind.
- [62:03]
Pat Wright
But never mind. Well, I would like to take a moment now to thank the people involved in creating this beautiful music that we've been listening to. This is a recording from 1988 by the Vienna State Opera conductor Sir John Pritchard and chorus master Helmut for a shower.
- [62:24]
Gerald Malone
And we have a star cast. Idomeneo is sung by the late great Luciano Pavarotti, who is, I think in this recording at his very best. Idamante is sung by a mezzo soprano I hadn't heard of before, Agnes Balza, she's Greek, which has Nothing to do with it, except that this is all happening in Crete. But her voice is amazing. And Ilia is sung by the late great another one, Lucia Pop, who died extremely young. And Eletra is furiously sung by Edita Gruborova, who is fantastic at getting the rage over to the audience.
- [63:02]
Pat Wright
Critical for that role.
- [63:04]
Gerald Malone
Absolutely.
- [63:06]
Pat Wright
And we haven't met our Bache yet. And that's Leo Nucci. He does not have a large role, but he's a sounding board for Idomeneo.
- [63:16]
Gerald Malone
Come off it, Pat. He's Mr. Useless. He's been written in almost as a supernumerary and stands not the singer. The character, not the singer is pretty good, but the character is pretty useless. And he turns up and gives Domineo some hopeless advice and eventually some bad news, but that's about it. And he was brought on and coped with as a character that had to be introduced, but just for a walk on part. Important, but he's beautifully sung here and he does have one or two things to say.
- [63:49]
Pat Wright
Yes, but, Gerald, I see what you're doing. You're trying to race on with the story, which is admirable. However, we still have to do the opera helmet quiz.
- [63:57]
Gerald Malone
Ah.
- [63:58]
Pat Wright
I need to ask you, please, if you wouldn't mind summing up for us what's happened so far in the story. In Act 1, before we launch into.
- [64:07]
Gerald Malone
Act 2, we start off with a princess who is bemoaning her fate in an island that is not her home. That is Ilia at the end of the Trojan Wars. She and all her fellow Trojans have been taken to Crete and they are held captive. She has fallen in love with the son of the king, Idamante. The king is absent. He's lost in a voyage in transit somewhere that nobody knows whether he's dead or not. Maybe he's been killed. Maybe he's been drowned. What has happened is that Idamante has fallen hopelessly in love with Ilia, which is a bit unfortunate. He decides to free the Trojans so that he can have his way with Ilia, and the pair of them understand that they love each other. Meantime, the unwanted guest at the proceedings, Eletra, who has come fresh from presumably murdering her mother Clytemnestra, is lurking in the wings with a pash for Idamante and bemoaning her fate, as Elettra always does in operas. Yes, yes. We have various storms taking place and the public are worried about what Neptune is going to do or not do, as Neptune does as the mood takes him eventually the storms quell and Idomeneo appears on shore unscathed, troubled in his mind. Well, what he's done is, as everybody does with a God who's not benevolent, is. He's entered into a deal, hasn't he? The deal is that the first person he sees when he reaches the shore he will kill. When he reaches the shore, he sees some unfortunate stranger whom he bemoans the fate of. They have a conversation, and it's only during that conversation he recognizes that it's his own son. At that moment of recognition, Domineo turns his back on his son because he's going to have to work out some way of not having to kill him.
- [66:14]
Pat Wright
The people on the island of Crete are rejoicing.
- [66:18]
Gerald Malone
Well, they think everything's all right because the sea's calm, the winds have gone back to their caves. Idomeneo has arrived. What's not to like?
- [66:27]
Pat Wright
Well, hang on, things will change, things will change. But the beginning of Act 2 finds us in the royal apartments and Idomeneo is talking with Arbace, his royal advisor, the fellow you called useless earlier on. But he is a sounding board. He does give a chance for exposition to occur as Idomeneo is explaining why he is so troubled, why he has turned his back on Adamante.
- [66:56]
Gerald Malone
He's a useless foil in a double act. And so when the domineo begins to explain to arbaces, he says, yes, Neptune extorted from me is a tribute, a human sacrifice. Arbacci comes up with the really interesting interrogatory phrase of whom? That's all he bothers to say. And then a domineo tells us of the first person who should approach me without warning in the beach, who was that? Says Arbache. Steal yourself, my son.
- [67:26]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [67:27]
Gerald Malone
Then Arbache is described as growing faint, not that he was terribly glowing in the first place. He grows faint and that's all he does, really, except when he's then asked for a bit of advice, he reflects. Then we're told he's resolute, which is a bit unusual for poor old arbaces. He says he must find some other place to live in, some other land.
- [67:47]
Pat Wright
Because you can outrun the gods. We all know that. That's how it always works.
- [67:50]
Gerald Malone
It's not going to work to our bache, she says, is get him on a U, haul out of here and go somewhere else.
- [67:59]
Pat Wright
And it gets better, because not only we're going to get him out because we love him and somebody else is going to go with him because we're not crazy about having her here in Crete.
- [68:08]
Gerald Malone
Domineo has a great idea, which is that Elektra has turned up unexpectedly. She's in love with him. Why doesn't she get on the U haul with them and they get out of here?
- [68:18]
Pat Wright
It's so true. And that is going to make Elektra very happy. But before we hear Elektra's happiness, we're going to have Arbace leaving the scene and Ilia showing up. Ilia now this freed princess of Troy, daughter of King Priam. And she's going to come to have a word with Idomeneum, the king.
- [68:41]
Gerald Malone
Yes, she is. She explains that there could be nobody happier than her, that her countrymen have been freed. Idomeneo, listening to her, begins to understand almost subconsciously that she has fallen in.
- [68:56]
Pat Wright
Love with Idamante, because she explains that she wants to take Crete as her homeland and she wants to take Idomeneo as her father. My father's dead. I would like to think of you, King, as my father.
- [69:12]
Gerald Malone
And Idomeneo, who is not stupid, understands that what that means. His father in law.
- [69:18]
Pat Wright
It does. You know what's really interesting about this exchange? In the original piece we talked about some of the source material, but in the prior libretto from the early part of the 1700s, that was a love triangle as well, that Idomeneo was in love with Iliad. That's all gotten rid of in this opera. That was also part of the complicating interpersonal relationships in that other libretto.
- [69:44]
Gerald Malone
Yes, it's difficult to say that the plot here has been simplified, but it has been. And it's simplified further because when a Domineo, in this conversation with her, listens to her, he's on his own. Eventually, after Ilia is gone, and he says, how her ambiguous words disturb my mind. He's got it, hasn't he?
- [70:04]
Pat Wright
Yes. Let's hear a little bit of Ilia expressing these tender feelings towards Idomeneo as a father figure.
- [70:14]
Gerald Malone
Great idea.
- [71:45]
Ilia
Sa.
- [73:46]
Pat Wright
That was Ilia in Mozart's E Domineo. And things are resolving for her. As far as she's concerned, she's lost a lot. And all of her lamenting in the beginning is working out as best it can. She's said, yes, King Idomeneo, you can be my new father. She is in love with the crown prince, he's in love with her. There's this pesky Electra hanging around, but she's not too worried about that and she thinks things are going to work out okay. However, the person she's talking to. Idomeneo is ill at ease because he knows about this promise he's made to Neptune to sacrifice the first person he saw, who happens to be his own son. He can't be happy with Ilia. Recognizing that all of this is bubbling up in him, he departs the stage and on comes Elektra.
- [74:42]
Gerald Malone
And Elektra knows that Arbache has advised that Idamante is going to have to leave and she's going with him. Yes, so what better than that? As she says, what sweeter pleasure than mine was ever felt.
- [75:00]
Pat Wright
Yes, she knows that because Edamante has been instructed to accompany her back to Argos, back to her homeland. She doesn't mind leaving Crete as long as Idamante is coming with her. And she's. Ah, I win. Ilia, you do not get him. He gets to be with me because proximity, you know, nine tenths of the law is possession.
- [75:22]
Gerald Malone
And there are some great lines in the area that she sings. Passion close at hand Will drive from your heart more distant fires. Love the one you're with.
- [75:31]
Pat Wright
Yes, that's exactly the point. And so I think it'll be fun to hear a little bit of Elektra being happy. We don't hear Elektra happy very often.
- [75:40]
Gerald Malone
Not only fun to hear Elektra, but hear our singer being happy in this, because this is an important area, and I think it's beautifully sung.
- [75:48]
Ilia
Sa.
- [78:43]
Pat Wright
Electra is very happy. Things are going her way. And this is an interesting bit in the opera where Mozart is not doing the traditional opera Seria. Recitative, aria. Recitative, aria. He transitions so smoothly, so beautifully. A sign of development in the construction of opera.
- [79:05]
Gerald Malone
We have a trio, Pat.
- [79:06]
Pat Wright
Well, we're gonna work our way up to the trio. And even before that, after her song, it's gonna transition into a march which is going to take us nicely into this next scene where she's at the port and she's ready to embark on the boat with her beloved, and she thinks it's all going her way. But you're right, we do have a nice trio coming up.
- [79:28]
Gerald Malone
We've also got a chorus. And the seas having been rough, the chorus now has something else to say. The sea is calm. Let us go. Everything is reassuring. No, it isn't.
- [79:40]
Pat Wright
No, it isn't. Well, all of this emphasis on the sea being calm makes me a little uneasy. I don't know about you.
- [79:46]
Gerald Malone
I always think that when the sea is calm, you're just being set up for a monster to appear somewhere.
- [79:52]
Pat Wright
Yeah, the infamous calm before the storm.
- [79:55]
Gerald Malone
Calm before the storm. There are plenty of them in this opera.
- [79:58]
Pat Wright
Yes, indeed, there are storms, there's a little bit of calm. More storms than calm, I would say. But we have Idamante showing up and Elektra is so happy to see him.
- [80:11]
Gerald Malone
The other thing to remember is Adamante still does not know why he has to go. No, he is doing this by a sense of duty. And that's a really important part of his character. He loves his father. He seems to have been spurned by his father, but he's not resisting that. He still is prepared to do his father's bidding, even if it means going with this hellcat to a distant place.
- [80:37]
Pat Wright
That's true. And this is not going to be even the most difficult thing he has to do in order to obey and honor his father. This is one of them. But it's going to get worse, as you can guess from that. The vow that we know that took place. But here we're going to get all these characters. Idamante, Idomeneo, Electra and Ilia. And this is the quartet that we keep referring to. And you need to know that this is part of what Gerald was talking about earlier, about this not being a classic opera serie, because trios and quartets were rare to unheard of in the traditional opera serie. But Mozart, and we know Mozart was a genius, we know Mozart could do things that other people couldn't do. And he had this sense of theater and drama and the musical ability to carry it out.
- [81:33]
Gerald Malone
What was so exciting for the audience seeing this for the first time is that it would be for the first time that they had heard this trio. And as you said, Pat, it builds up to the quartet, which comes on a little bit later. But even this trio was an exciting thing because you get the conflicting views of Adamante, Electra and Idomeneo. And the audience can see these three characters in front of them all with different things on their agenda, trying to reconcile them and almost speaking to themselves and across each other. It's very powerful theater.
- [82:06]
Pat Wright
Yes. I'm sorry, I misspoke earlier when I said quartet, I did mean trio. I'm excited. Cause there is a quartet coming up.
- [82:13]
Gerald Malone
We're getting so excited.
- [82:14]
Pat Wright
We are getting so excited. And the emotion builds. This is the drama of opera, of theater and opera, which is theater, just with all the pieces and elements brought in to enjoy. And I think we've said this before on opera for everyone, but these moments when you have multiple characters singing at the same time, they might even use the same words. And mean different things. But it's just something you can't do in spoken dialogue where you have different points of view, different emotions being expressed simultaneously in beautiful harmony.
- [82:50]
Gerald Malone
It's boring. Previously, people were used to singers standing and almost reciting things, either with just a harpsichord or in some other cases, with a little bit of orchestration in a recitative, just to move things along before you got to the next set piece area. And then, of course, you have the da capo areas of Handel, a bit in Mozart as well, where you simply went round in circles and said the same thing again and again. Mozart had more of a dramatic line than previous composers and that compelled audiences, not least because the audiences in Germany wanted to listen to what was happening. You often had to have di capo areas in Italy because everybody was playing cards, having drinks or getting up to shenanigans in the boxes. If you didn't play it five times, they would never even hear it once.
- [83:38]
Pat Wright
Yes, that's an interesting comparison. Maybe listening to a little bit of this lovely trio will help us to understand Mozart and where we're headed in opera.
- [83:53]
Gerald Malone
Oh, yes, it's a great taster for what is going to come in the years ahead. Never mind just this opera.
- [86:43]
Pat Wright
They have just sung. May this agitation cease and heaven stretch out a hand in compassion.
- [86:49]
Gerald Malone
Do you think something's going to happen?
- [86:51]
Pat Wright
I think, and I'm reading from the libretto now. A storm suddenly springs up. Okay, well, that's what's gonna happen. And the chorus says, what new terror is this?
- [87:04]
Gerald Malone
Didn't take long, did it?
- [87:06]
Pat Wright
It didn't take long.
- [88:07]
Gerald Malone
And the storm increases, the sea rises, but in addition, a monster has appeared.
- [88:13]
Pat Wright
Oh, no.
- [88:13]
Gerald Malone
Neptune isn't pleased, of course.
- [88:16]
Pat Wright
One of the characters who does the work that Neptune needs done.
- [88:21]
Gerald Malone
The people are terrified and they're going to hold Idomeneo to account, I think.
- [88:27]
Pat Wright
Idomeneo confesses. He says, I am the guilty one. I alone have sinned. Just punish me. Just me.
- [88:36]
Gerald Malone
And of course, he's beginning to go down in the polls a bit. And we'll, you know, the king who's just been rescued from the sea, he has not been presiding over peace and temperate life in Crete, and it's about to come and bite him back.
- [88:53]
Pat Wright
Yes, but I do love the fact that here he is fessing up and he says, I cannot give you the innocent one. I'm the one who did wrong. I am the guilty one. He wants to take responsibility for the terror that is going to roll over the people of Crete.
- [89:16]
Gerald Malone
But of course it's going to be Adamanti, who has been sent away. And something is going to happen, isn't it? Because he's not standing idly by. Why monsters chew up the public. Is Idamante?
- [89:29]
Pat Wright
No, but we're going to close out Act 2 right now, with the people of Crete fleeing the scene and the scary sea monster.
- [89:40]
Gerald Malone
The people of Crete aren't stupid. Let us run, Let us fly from that pitiless monster. Wouldn't you?
- [90:27]
Ilia
Ra.
- [90:58]
Pat Wright
The cretins have fled, trying to escape the terrible sea monster. And we are ready for Act 3. Now, in the royal garden, we have Ilia alone. Ilia's sad once again, just as she was at the beginning of the first act, the beginning of the opera, and.
- [91:18]
Gerald Malone
She'S joined by Idamante and they have a conversation. And Idamante offers himself back to her. And they make it perfectly clear that they're in love with each other, which they weren't terribly sure of at some point.
- [91:35]
Pat Wright
No more wondering. They've declared themselves.
- [91:37]
Gerald Malone
They've declared themselves and they've committed themselves. And there's a very interesting point in this exchange where Idamante says he has to go because his father says so. And then Ilya comes back with a reply which is very interesting. Oh, Prince, calm this melancholy ferment. Recall that you are the sole hope of a great empire.
- [92:00]
Pat Wright
Hang on to that for a moment.
- [92:01]
Gerald Malone
What happened? What happened to Domineo? Yeah, she is planning the succession. Ilya's a clever lady.
- [92:08]
Pat Wright
Yes, well, you told us. She is the heart of this show.
- [92:12]
Gerald Malone
As we will see further on down the line when we get a little bit further.
- [92:17]
Pat Wright
Yeah, well, after they've declared each other, of course. Iromante tells her, I have to go and I may well die.
- [92:25]
Gerald Malone
Well, Adamante's always close to dying. Everybody is in these operas, so that's not unusual. She expresses her wish that she should perish as well if he does so. It's just a little bit of the usual opera to and fro of if you die, I'll die. I adore you. If you wish to die, grief will already have killed me before you can do so. Bit over the top.
- [92:49]
Pat Wright
Well, yes. However, he does know what the immediate threat is, because he has to be a leader to his people, be a savior of his people and take on this terrible sea monster.
- [93:02]
Gerald Malone
Yes. Adamanti says before he leaves, you shall be what, Ilia? As you desire me. Idamante, my bride. Ilia, will you be my bridegroom. So they seal their pact before he disappears to face the sea monster.
- [93:22]
Pat Wright
That's Right. And after that tender moment in Walk, Idomeneo and Electra, the two most difficult.
- [93:31]
Gerald Malone
People who could appear at this moment. Ilia says, we are discovered, beloved. The game's up.
- [93:38]
Pat Wright
And this is the quartet that we've been looking forward to.
- [93:43]
Gerald Malone
Yes, we have. And with some reason it is, I think, one of Mozart's most fantastic pieces, as I mentioned before. And it was so good that the Mozart family used to sing it in their own home.
- [93:56]
Pat Wright
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it, Leopold? Cause the mother had died at this point.
- [94:00]
Gerald Malone
The mother had died when Mozart was on his tour in France. And we were left with Mozart's wife Constanze, the sister Nanneril and Leopold. And they used to sing this quartet together. Nanneril was also a beneficiary of this opera because Leopold insisted that a new dress be bought for Nanneril so that she could appear in all her finery in Munich at the premiere. And that dress cost 50% of Mozart's fee for writing the opera, which he already had to split with the librettist.
- [94:36]
Pat Wright
Right.
- [94:37]
Gerald Malone
So Nanneril was pretty important to Mozart.
- [94:40]
Pat Wright
Well, it's also worth remembering, Nannerl is the older sister of Wolfgang, and she went on some of those earliest trips abroad with her father and brother. She was quite an accomplished musician herself.
- [94:55]
Gerald Malone
It was a Mozart family business, wasn't it? Yes, and they all went together and they all played to their own strengths. One of Nannerl's strengths was to get good gown money out of her brother.
- [95:06]
Pat Wright
I still want to recognize her musicianship and the fact that she couldn't fulfill the kind of ambitions that Mozart was trying to fulfill for himself in terms of career achievement. That simply wasn't the role for a woman at this point in time.
- [95:20]
Gerald Malone
Her problem was that she was an instrumentalist, not a singer. Singers could, but instrumentalists less so in those days.
- [95:28]
Pat Wright
Well, hats off to the Mozart family. It's interesting. Costanza, who did sing this as a quartet in the Mozart family, she was not yet married to Mozart at this point after Mozart's death. She did say that this time that he was writing and it was being performed Idomeneo that it was the happiest time of his life, which is quite a statement for a woman who was not yet married to her husband at that time.
- [95:54]
Gerald Malone
Well, Mozart was well known to Constanza's family, having courted her sister Aloysia to start with and been rejected. And they knew each other very well by this stage. So it's hardly surprising that that was the case. Can I say something about the construction of the quartet because I think it's very important. This is almost one of the first occasions in operatic music where all the four contrary lines of people's thoughts are pulled together. And I always think of it as listening to four different threads being woven into a single fabric of a quartet, which is very beautiful. And the impact on the audience is tremendous.
- [97:05]
Ilia
SA satisfaction. SA.
- [100:30]
Gerald Malone
And after that, we have Mr. Useless Arbachi who becomes Mr. Unhappy Arbachi. And he is talking about the City of Tears and the palace of Sorrow. And will anybody be satisfied with all this blood? He is not an optimist, Arbaces. Not the kind of guy you want in your PR team.
- [100:50]
Pat Wright
Yeah, his advice was not great and. Yeah, that's fair. In the next scene, we're going to meet Neptune's high priest.
- [101:00]
Gerald Malone
Oh, he is Mr. Somebody.
- [101:02]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [101:03]
Gerald Malone
And he has got the royal retinue out and about and sitting down on a throne reserved for public audiences. The high priest and a large crowd of people. This is where they give Idomeneo the bad news. Gaze around you, sire, and see what dreadful devastation the savage monster has wrought in your noble kingdom. Yes, to hold the pools of blood Idomeneus policies of returning and not saying very much about what he pledged to Neptune is not paying off in policy terms.
- [101:34]
Pat Wright
No, it's not.
- [101:35]
Gerald Malone
And the high priest gives him this on you alone depends our fate. Only you can save from death the rest of your people. He's going to have to fulfill this pledge.
- [101:47]
Pat Wright
Yes. And the people will sing together. O terrible vow. Dreadful, beautiful sight. Death now reigns. This is really bad. We are making our way to the.
- [102:29]
Arbace
End of Mozart's Idomeneo.
- [102:32]
Pat Wright
Things are looking bad. There's a terrible sea monster on the loose. Edamante, the king's son, has gone out to try his best to see what he can do. But everyone is focused on Idomeneo and his vow. They are preparing for human sacrifice now.
- [102:51]
Gerald Malone
As also is Idamante, who is beginning to understand that he is going to have to be sacrificed if all this is going to end.
- [102:59]
Pat Wright
And he's dutiful to his father. He's a king who takes the welfare of his people very seriously.
- [103:05]
Gerald Malone
That is one of the crucial points, I think, about this opera and the personal dilemmas of everybody involved. Idamante's loyalty is to his father and to his duty. And not to his person, and not even to Ilia. All that comes second.
- [103:22]
Pat Wright
Yes. He is one of these idealized rulers where he takes the welfare of his people foremost as his most important goal, which is why he is able to slay the sea monster.
- [103:39]
Gerald Malone
Well, indeed. And Arbache reports on the fact that Idamante has headed off and is determined to do his best to rid the public of this monster.
- [103:52]
Pat Wright
Yes, and he reports that it has been killed.
- [103:55]
Gerald Malone
Well, good news, Arbache, good news. I mean, he's either Mr. Useless or he's Mr. Miserable. Or he has triumphed over it. He threw himself furiously upon the savage monster, overcame it and killed it. Oh, we are saved at last.
- [104:11]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes, but all is not well because we know Neptune can just send another sea monster. Something must be done about that vow.
- [104:19]
Gerald Malone
Well, Idomeneo knows that and he says, alas, Neptune will be moved to new fury against us. Now our batche to your sorrow, you will see that Idamante found what he was seeking and he himself will be death's booty.
- [104:35]
Pat Wright
Yes, and here is where we are going to get our just heart rending sacrifice scene where a father is preparing to sacrifice to kill his own son to appease the God.
- [104:50]
Gerald Malone
Absolutely totally heartrending. But there is an intervention because Ilia decides to step in and suggest that she too will be prepared to sacrifice herself instead of Idamante.
- [105:04]
Pat Wright
Well, you put that so mildly. But it's very dramatic. When she steps in she's really saying no, sacrifice me, because you cannot sacrifice this man that I love so well.
- [105:16]
Gerald Malone
Yes, and it's the turning point of the whole opera because it is that act of self sacrifice by her which is totally disinterested. Unlike everybody else who says something in the game here, it's her disinterested act of self sacrifice that appeases Neptune. And we hear the voice.
- [105:38]
Pat Wright
Yes, and before we hear the voice I want to just make a comment about Ilia because she reminds me a little bit of Pamina, where these two young people are going to be the new generation. And it's not just one of them who is going to be the leader. As a couple they prove themselves worthy. They haven't gone through Masonic trials here, but each has been tested to see what they are going to do outside of themselves to prove themselves worthy as leaders.
- [106:14]
Gerald Malone
I have to say that the Masonic trials of the Magic Flute are nothing compared to Neptune and the sea monster and the corpses that are washed up in the beach all over Crete. This is kids stuff.
- [106:26]
Pat Wright
Well, this is not a singspiel. This is dead dramatic the whole way through. But you're right, we have a voice. This voice we are going to hear after she proclaims her willingness to step in and be the sacrificial victim, to set things right.
- [106:43]
Gerald Malone
And it's more than this opera because she is setting herself up, and Mozart is setting her up as the powerful women that he empowered through most of his operas that succeeded this. And it's a vital. You have been listening to the voice that Deus ex machina in operas that resolves plots, and this one certainly does. Love has triumphed. Idomeneo shall cease to reign. Idamante shall be king and Ilia his bride. Why have we taken so long to get here? The voices said it all.
- [109:38]
Pat Wright
Sometimes you just need one of the gods to drop in and set things straight.
- [109:42]
Gerald Malone
Well, they certainly do. And it spells the end of Idomeneo's reign. And it actually marks another important turning point where in the world of enlightenment, not every ruler is permanently entitled to reign. Sometimes, if you can't hack it, you have to go, right?
- [110:00]
Pat Wright
Sometimes it's time to step aside. And the truth is here, Idomenejo is relieved beyond words.
- [110:07]
Gerald Malone
He says, oh, merciful heaven. But guess what, Pat? There's somebody who doesn't like this. I wonder who it might be.
- [110:15]
Pat Wright
Oh, the one who specializes in rage arias, I'm guessing.
- [110:18]
Gerald Malone
Oh, it's her, absolutely.
- [110:25]
Ilia
We.
- [111:43]
Pat Wright
Our Electra, the unhappy woman who loses out in the love triangle with Idamante and Ilia, who have been put together by the God Neptune himself.
- [111:54]
Gerald Malone
Do you think she's upset, Pat?
- [111:58]
Pat Wright
Did you just hear what we played? Did you just hear that music?
- [112:01]
Gerald Malone
Within my breast I feel the torments of Orestes and of Ajax, Alex, whose torch is bringing her death. Tear out my heart, you horned serpents, or a sword shall end my pain. And, you know, in some of these productions, she then kills herself. In others she exits to appear again elsewhere, which is probably more historically realistic. But it's the end of Elektra as far as the opera of Idomeneo is concerned.
- [112:31]
Pat Wright
Yes. Goodbye, Elektra. And we are only left with happy people.
- [112:35]
Gerald Malone
Yes, happy people, reconciled people. And they've had to think about it because a Domineo has had to give up his kingdom. We have a couple now who are going to rule. And it's not just a king, it is a couple, a married couple, who are happy. But authority has to be shared. And that, I think, is the enlightenment message of this opera. And I often wonder how that went down when the Elector saw all this happening in his own opera house and instructions being given that you had to be very careful how you ruled, or it could be the end of you.
- [113:12]
Pat Wright
Well, from what I know of Elector Carl Theodore, he was very much a self consciously enlightenment figure. Of course he was a monarch and he didn't share authority. But in terms of understanding what his responsibilities towards people were, in terms of his embracing and cultivating the arts, I mean, here we are with Mozart. I don't think he saw this as a threat to himself. I think he saw this as reinforcing the goodness of his own position. I could be wrong, but that's how I'm seeing it.
- [113:47]
Gerald Malone
I think politically that's probably right. And Mozart had a far easier time of getting this sort of thing passed the elector in Munich than Verdi did getting through the census in Italy, which is, I think quite interesting. So there was a bit of downhill after Mozart. People were freer in this era.
- [114:07]
Pat Wright
Yeah, we're going to end on the chorus where we have just celebration, rejoicing and we have an acknowledgement of the power of the gods, but that things have worked out well on Earth. After all, we have had the former enemies, the Cretans and the Trojans reconciled in not just the freeing of the Trojans, but in the marriage of the Trojan princess Ilia and Crete's own crown prince, soon to become King Idamante and.
- [114:38]
Gerald Malone
Recognized by his father Idomeneo. Thus does Flora's season make the old tree bloom again and give it fresh vigor. Sometimes it's good to know when to go.
- [114:50]
Pat Wright
Yes, yes, yes. Well, what a great segue to us ending our discussion of this opera. We'll let you listen to that. But I would like to say, Gerald Malone, thank you so much for joining me on Opera for Everyone. This has been truly a delight.
- [115:08]
Gerald Malone
And Pat, thank you for asking me. It's been an enormous pleasure, great fun, and given me many more insights into Domineo than I've had in my lifetime.
- [116:30]
Arbace
Thanks for listening to this episode of Opera for Everyone. I've been your host today, Pat Wright, joined by opera critic Gerald Malone. Opera for Everyone airs every Sunday morning from 9 to 11am Mountain Time on 89.1 Khol in Jackson, Wyoming. If you've missed any of today's show, you can find this episode and many others on the Opera for Everyone podcast. And while you're there, please subscribe, rate and comment. By doing this, you'll be helping others to find us. I know opera can be unfamiliar and challenging, but everyone loves a good story and a story set to music is even better. That's why the mission of this show is to make opera enjoyable for everyone. Opera for Everyone.
- [117:27]
Ilia
Sa Ra.