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Siete qui: Home Festival Festival 2010 Idomeneo, or on Mozartian sublime
Idomeneo, or on Mozartian sublime PDF Print E-mail
The site is Munich, in Bavaria, in 1780, at the court of the Prince Elector Palatine of Karl Theodor. Mozart, twenty-five, moves towards the place filled with hope and with plenty of energy to give away. He has just been commissioned by the Prince to compose an opera. He was given the task of putting to music the story of Idomeneo, on the libretto of abbot Giambattista Varesco, chapel master of the court of the Archbishop of Salzburg, known to “Wolfi Amadeo” as the grim and very poorly tolerated Hieronymus Colloredo. Yet this is also a one-time occasion to disengage himself from the obligations of Salzburg to breathe a bit of fresh air of freedom. For now he also obtains long leave from the archbishop! What better occasion to show his abilities outside the walls of his own city? After having laid “at home” the base where to compose his opera, it was his practice to visit at once the performance site to meet the cast. The opera was successfully performed at the Residenztheater, the court theatre in Munich, on the 29th January 1781. Apart from some difficulty with male voices – Mozart feared that Dal Prato would not manage to finish his aria and called tenor Anton Raaf «a statue», but was quite satisfied with the female voices –, the young gentleman from Salzburg finds an extraordinary orchestra at the court! It is the prodigious Mannheimer Orchestra, formed out of the best European musicians, which Karl Theodor had gathered around him from Mannheim. The composer would not leave the occasion run out of his hands and so writes an amazingly beautiful score, with very innovative use and literally reckless of strings, which throw light on his sparkling virtuosity and the composing of large orchestral palettes in which wind instruments stand out for their colours and ability to define environmental paintings of the sea, monsters and storms. Within the dramatic framework of a serious opera one already finds the best of Mozart. Looking within the gilded notes written by the Salzburg genius also suggests the most beautiful suggestions which Europe could propose at the time: the spectacular and choreographic pictures inherited from the French tragédie lyrique formula, Sturm und Drang influences and quivering suggested by the Mannheim symphonists, the acknowledgement of the renewal proposals of Gluck’s opera, with spectacular and terrifying drapery and their choral and dramatic frescos, the sonor (sound) and turning of beautiful Italian singing. Within this aesthetic and highly dramatic picture Mozart gives us himself, and plenty of it too. He warps the form, does not let himself be bound by the “old” convention of serious opera, writes superb accompanied recitals dissolved in large arias, darting orchestral scores, heart-throbbing ensembles and big choral scenes. It all flows with continuity because it is the music which dictates times, commands the plait and history, which “represents”. Thus, for example, in the pulsating aria of Elettra Tutte nel cor vi sento which penetrates in one whole piece into the dramatic shipwreck choir Pietà, numi, pietà, the desperate cries of the shipwrecked from Idomeneo’s fleet are heard, divided in two voices: those of the nearest persons, who have by now made it to the shore, and those of the despairing sailors still on the high sea at the mercy of the waves – a disturbing musical picture indeed! In a letter written to his father, anxiously following him from Salzburg, here is the direct witness of a Mozart who is literally enraptured by the composition: «I am so full, head and hands, with Act III that I would not be at all surprised were I also to become an Act III myself. This act has been more painful for me than the whole opera, because it is difficult to find a scene which is not of extreme interest». The plot is set on events turning around Idomeneo, king of Crete, his son Idamante, two women, Ilia and Elettra in constant struggle for Idomeneo and an imprisoned people – the Trojans. It weaves fragility and human drama together, with a symbolic relationship designed between man and his monsters, his fears, man and God. The backdrop consists of the sea and the prodigious force of nature. And this is what the enthused commissioning Prince said when he had heard it: «I was enormously surprised! Never before has any other music made such great impression on me. It’s superb! It seems unbelievable that in such a small head such a great thing could hide itself».


Marino Mora