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1781 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante (Italian for Idomeneus, King of Crete, or, Ilia and Idamante; usually referred to simply as Idomeneo,K. 366) is an Italian-language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, based on a 1705 play by Crébillion père, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. He probably chose the subject, though it may have been Mozart. The work premiered on 29 January 1781 at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany.

Composition

The libretto clearly draws inspiration from Metastasio in its overall layout, the type of character development, and the highly poetic language used in the various numbers and the secco and stromentatorecitatives. The style of the choruses, marches, and ballets is very French, and the shipwreck scene towards the end of act 1 is almost identical to the structure and dramatic working-out of a similar scene in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. The sacrifice and oracle scenes are similar to Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide and Alceste.

Kurt Kramer has suggested that Varesco was familiar with Calzabigi and therefore the work of Gluck, especially the latter's Alceste; much of what we see in Varesco's most dramatic passages is the latest French style, mediated by Calzabigi. It is thanks to Mozart, though, that this mixture of French styles (apart from a few choruses) moves away from Gluck and France and returns to its more Italian (opera seria) roots; the singers were all trained in the classical Italian style, after all, and the recitatives are all classically Italian.

Ballet music, K. 367

As per French tradition, the opera uses ballet to its advantage. Mozart wrote one to be performed in the

A survey of major recordings of Mozart’s Idomeneo
by Ralph Moore

Downloadable (pdf) version

Idomeneo was one of only two mature opere serie Mozart composed, the other being La clemenza di Tito. It was not a success, either at its premiere or subsequently, until well into the 20C but is unquestionably the first of his seven great operas, written when Mozart was 25. (Trivia snippet: it is also the first opera to include a clarinet in the scoring.)

There are around sixty recordings in all; I review here fourteen accounts, of which no fewer than four are conducted by Colin Davis and three by John Pritchard. Nine are studio recordings, and two of the five live performances are in mono. I have ignored several recordings in the catalogue simply on the grounds that they are too flawed by being badly played or under-cast, such as those by Maag and Guidarini, which are often euphemistically described as being “a mixed bag” – and I don’t see that we need to settle for that if we can have better. Any regular readers will know that I am not a great fan of Nicolai Gedda’s tenor but he was the Idomeneo du jour in the early 70s and features in a superior broadcast from Rome conducted by Colin Davis and another studio recording conducted by Schmidt-Isserstedt, so he is properly represented. I draw the line, however, at contemplating a review of Ian Bostridge as Idomeneo in Mackerras’ 2001 studio recording on EMI; his voice, such as it is, is wholly inadequate to this heroic role and he had no business recording it (or, to my mind, anything else, for that matter…)

You will note a preponderance below of recordings of Germanic and English-speaking origin; there is only one from Rome with no Italian principals – it seems that the Italians are not quite as keen on Mozart as other nations but productions of Idomeneo have been mounted at La Scala from time to time (as in 2005 and 2019, for example). Similarly, Pavarotti is the only Italian in this survey to

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