Customer Reviews

Mozart - Idomeneo / Ponnelle, Levine, The Metropolitan Opera [VHS]

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Following Mozart's final youthful opera, Il re pastore, which was composed in 1775 (see the fine new DVD performance from Salzburg conducted by Neville Marriner), Mozart received no new operatic commissions (other than the fragment Zaide) until 1780-81. He spent those 5 years internalising all of European music, always yearning to write opera, always searching for a good libretto and a new commission. Idomeneo was finally commissioned for Munich by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, and premiered in Munich in 1781. Although theoretically an example of opera seria, Idomeneo should more properly be considered embryonic Grand Opera. There is something Verdian about this great dramatic masterpiece. Idomeneo is a true tragic hero: literally buffeted by fate in a sea-storm, he is placed in the untenable position of saving himself by promising Neptune he would sacrifice the first living creature he met upon returning home to Crete. He has a chance meeting with Idamante, who has been roaming the shore. Idomeneo, less than thrilled by this random encounter, reacts even more coolly after recognizing his son, now grown. Idamante, dismayed by his father's puzzling lack of affection, is also beset by amorous issues: he is loved by the proud princess Electra, but he is in love with a Trojan princess, Ilia, who rejects him. Ilia was sent to Crete, along with other prisoners of war, by Idomeneo in advance of his return from Troy. Neptune's impatience for a sacrifice, the intricacies of love and ambition, the nature of power and fate, all make up the fabric of Mozart's Grand Opera. It is unquestionably a masterpiece.

This makes Idomeneo's subsequent performance history particularly puzzling. It was revived only once in Mozart's lifetime, was performed fairly frequently in Austria and Germany following his death, but did not reach England until 1934 and still was not performed professionally until Glyndebourne in 1951. It was first produced in America in 1947 at the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, in Lenox Massachusetts. Most stunningly of all, Idomeneo's very first performance at the Met did not occur until 14 October 1982: this very production! The seventh performance, given on 6 November, is the one filmed here.

Mozart's use of a chorus is years ahead of its time: dramatic without being declamatory, he gave his people of Crete some of the most beautiful melodies he had composed this early in his operatic career. Of special note is the exquisite embarkation chorus, Placido e il mar. One of the features that makes this production so superb is the excellence of the Met's chorus. But that is merely one of many reasons why this DVD is a recommended purchase for confirmed Mozarteans as well as lovers of great singing and drama. Each major member of this star-laden cast was essentially captured at their peak. The casting was inspired, so by a happy accident we have a nearly perfect recording of the first of the 7 great mature operas from Mozart's "golden decade".

Luciano Pavarotti is simply superb as Idomeneo. Everything that made him a truly great singer in his prime is in evidence here. His tone is crystalline, his Italianate phrasing is perfection as is his uncannily clear diction. Each word, sung or spoken, rings with pristine clarity, like a bell. His acting (not his usual strong suit), as a deeply troubled yet ultimately resolute Idomeneo, is as fine as I've ever seen Pavarotti act. He is obviously enjoying this part: he sang Idamante in his 1964 debut at Glyndebourne. If you've ever wondered why he became a star, it is firmly in evidence here. Frederica von Stade is a wonderful Idamante, a role originally written for a soprano castrato. She is utterly believable and her singing is excellent. Ileana Cotrubas is an inspired Ilia, mingling pathos and passion in her singing as well as acting. Hildegard Behrens is a knock-out Electra. She is a more Straussian Electra than Mozartian in her increasing madness. The rest of the cast is similarly excellent. There are no seriously weak links in this cast. James Levine and the Met Orchestra are superb, as they usually were at this time. The simple yet elegant production was designed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. This is an inspired performance of Idomeneo. One that truly merits your serious attention.

The picture format of this two DVD set is NTSC full screen shot with a 4:3 aspect ratio. The picture is digitally remastered and clear with no visual artifacts and only slight fuzziness due to the age of the tape. The region code is 0 worldwide. Menu language is English with subtitles in English, German, French, Spanish and Chinese. Sound formats are PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 Digital Surround. The sound is clear and bright with the DTS format providing great ambiance from the rear speakers, and a clarity and spatial localization of voices and instruments that imparts a feeling of "liveness" to the performance. Bonuses include a picture gallery and trailers from DGG. Total time of the discs is 182 minutes.

A superb performance of a Mozart masterpiece. A life enhancing DVD set that is strongly recommended.

Mike Birman

This is an excellent video recording of a ravishing Metropolitan Opera production from 1982. All the major components of a great success are here. Fine conducting as ever from James Levine, the always excellent orchestra and chorus of the Met, stunning sets, costumes, lighting and production, and five defining performances from the lead singers. The bouquets really must go to the ladies, all three of them in their prime, singing marvellously well and looking quite delightful. The beautifully sung and exquisitly realised Ilia of Ileana Cotrubas is breathtakingly lovely. Every phrase seems suffused with meaning, every note with lyrical beauty. What an advantage to have a Trojan Princess of such physical grace and beauty when paired with the splendidly sung and incredibly handsome Idamante of Frederica von Stade. The two lovers duet with utter beauty and conviction providing a wonderful example of real Mozartian singing at its best. Hildegard Behrens completes the trio, an inspired piece of casting this. She looks and sounds quite (rightly) bonkers, and her awesome stage prescence, vocal power and dramatic intensity bring this lovelorn daughter of Agamemnon to intense and exciting life. John Alexander sings the hideously difficult part of Arbace with great skill and beauty and, surprisingly to me, Luciano Pavarotti sings the title role really very well. I had not considered him a natural Mozartian before, and I was charmed with his restrained and careful performance. I can't understand why this performance is not available on DVD as I gather this recording is one of the Met's biggest sellers. I live in hope.

Odd that this excellent release has not received a singlereview so far. Idomeneo is Mozart's first master opera, the first ofseven "operatic miracles" that he composed in the lastdecade of his life. His early contributions to the genre are alsoextraordinary works: Il Re Pastore, Mitridate, La Finta Giardinieraetc. But it is generally agreed that with Idomeneo he reached hismaturity as an opera composer. It is a powerful, dense, very dramaticwork with beautiful arias. And this is a very good rendition of thismasterwork. I liked the set and staging and the arias are beautifullysung. The opera is sung in the original Italian with Englishsubtitles and the synopsis provided comes in handy to understand theplot. I always thought that James Levine definitely understandsMozart: the arias and recitatives are never too fast, the way I thinkMozart should be played, which enhances the dramatic element and thebeauty of those arias of supreme inspiration. Ok, so I tried to fillthe gap....

Ever since the passing of the Pav, I have been obtaining as many of his outstanding performances on DVD that I can. This one is absolutely superb!

Am still looking for his La Fille du Regiment with Sutherland and not finding it.

But, this DVD I can highly recommend for opera lovers and Pavarotti lovers.

After reading the reviews already submitted, I can limit myself to an enthusiastic second for Birman and Linton. They say better and in more detail exactly what I would like to say. This is a classy performance in which all the stars and featured players earned high marks for their contribution to the unified group effort and James Levine showed what an orchestra sounds like when it is sharing the spotlight not dominating it.
I have seen the DVD of only one other performance, that in the Mozart 22 box set with Magdalena Kozena, Anja Harteros, Ekaterina Siurina, and Ramon Vargas. On no element of staging and performance is it in the same league with the Mets version.(To be fair, there are astute reviewers who hold the reverse opinion. )

A beautiful performance of Idomeneo. Pavarotti is marvelous, so are Frederica von Stade and Hildegard Behrens. Levine conducts a beautiful rendition of this early Mozart opera with its gorgeous music, that should be performed much more often than it is.

The opera was great. This production is awesome. Pavarotti was wonderful. ...but I gave the over all dvd 3 stars because of a flaw in the last aria by Pavarotti. It stalled and skipped. I was so disappointed because it is my favorite aria in this entire opera and I could not hear it. This was a remastered new dvd. I played it on other devices and got the same disappointing results. I did complain and was compensated minimally. I was told that a replacement dvd would not guarantee a lack of the same flaw!! So disappointing!

Idomeneo was Mozart's first great opera. It was written for Munich, which was home to one of the finest orchestras of the day; that this fired Mozart's imagination can be heard in the very colorful orchestral writing. He was composing for excellent singers that he knew well and liked, and the lead roles are tailored to their particular skills. Mozart was also determined to elevate the stilted, formulaic opera seria for to the level of real drama, and to a large extent he succeeded. For the first time his music limns the characters with real life and personality. Mozart lavished great care on both the musical numbers and the recitative, and there is an unusually large amount of accompanied recitative, which is wonderfully flexible and expressive. There is also a move toward greater dramatic continuity; many musical numbers lead directly into the ensuing recitative without coming to a full close, a very forward-looking concept.
The opera presents two major problems for modern staging. The first is that the role of Idamante was written for a castrato, a voice type used regularly in Baroque opera, but which was already becoming rare in Mozart's time, and which we cannot begin to approximate today. The old solution for a castrato role was to transpose the music down and assign it to a male singer. In fact, Mozart did this himself. For a later Vienna production there were no adequate castrati available, and Idamante's part was rewritten for tenor. A castrato part can be taken by a countertenor in a small house, but today these parts are usually sung by women. This creates obvious problems of dramatic verisimilitude, especially since most castrato parts are heroic male characters. In this production Idamante is sung by Frederica Von Stade, who made something of a specialty of trouser roles. She sings beautifully and creates a credible character.
The second problem is that there is no definitive text for the opera. Mozart composed a great deal of music for the Munich production, but apparently he made extensive cuts in rehearsal, often sacrificing beautiful music for dramatic pacing. However, we have no record of what was actually performed. For the Vienna production further cuts and additions were made, and several arias were rewritten for different singers. For this production excellent choices were made from the available material to produce a compelling dramatic structure.
James Levine conducts very well. This first production of the opera at the Met was no doubt a labor of love, and he gives it his all. This is a big-scaled performance, scaled for dramatic impact and the size of the house. Though the camera never focuses on the orchestra, it sounds large, but there is no loss of clarity and precision. Idomeneo has the largest chorus part of any Mozart opera, and the chorus seems to enjoy itself.
Von Stade's fine performance has already been noted; the rest of the cast is at a similarly high level. Ileana Cotrubas is a lovely, lyrical Ilia. Hildegard Behrens was perhaps a strange choice for Elettra, but she brings it off well, creating a memorably half-mad character and singing with unexpected flexibility. Luciano Pavarotti seldom sang Mozart, but Idomeneo is the closest Mozart came to a dramatic tenor role, and it suits him well. He sings with his usual fine line, flawless diction, and dramatic awareness. It is unfortunate that the big aria "Fuor del mar" is done in the later, simplified version rather than the highly florid original, but runs were not really Pavarotti's thing. He manages the coloratura in "Torna la pace" but sounds less than comfortable. Arbace is seldom sung by a tenor of John Alexander's caliber, but Alexander does his best to make something interesting out of this static character. One could only wish the runs in his first aria were cleaner.
Jean-Pierre Ponelle's abstract staging works well, aside from a few weirdnesses. The giant head of Neptune that dominates the stage is very effective. The costumes are in eighteenth-century style and quite lovely.
All told, this is a powerful performance of a fascinating opera. For the best Mozart style I'd recommend the audio recording by John Eliot Gardiner, which is also finely cast and includes all the alternate versions in an appendix. The only recording I've heard with a tenor Idamante is Colin Davis's first recording, long out of print.

I really can't imagine a better rendition of this opera nor a better cast. For me this is a dream cast. Elektra is fine and yes almost Wagnerian. Pavarotti is the best I have ever seen him both vocally and acting wise. I agree with an earlier reviewer please modernize the operas and do away with the trouser roles and use a tenor. The two soprano leads were ideally cast and what a sublime chorus and orchestra. I would venture to say that Indomeneo belongs in the top 10 opera list

Mozart's "Idomeneo", first composed in 1780 had to wait until 1947 to receive its first US premiere at Tanglewood in the Berkshires, and then wait another 35-years before receiving its official welcome at the Met on October 14, 1982 - which is the tape date of this new release from Deutsche Grammophon, on a digitalized 2-DVD package. With a cast featuring Pavarotti, singing the role of Idomeneo ( the father who offers a sacrifice of the first life he encounters if the gods will spare him from the fate of an angry sea), Frederica von Stade, singing the role of his son Idamante (the first person he encounters) (I don't know why the Met cast a woman in the son's role, since even Mozart saw fit to change the role of son from castrato to tenor in 1786), Ileana Cotrubas singing the role of Trojan princess Illia, and Hildegard Behrens, singing the role of Princess Elattra. It is a powerhouse cast that delivers mesmerizing performances to some of Mozart's most poignant and subtle, full and supportive music. It is a joy to hear and a pleasure to watch - even with a few shortfalls in the manner of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's somewhat drab settings and dark lighting. Another small minus is the aged ":full screen" as opposed to contemporary "widescreen" presentation. Still, watching this cast perform is its own reward. The digital audio simply enhances the sound of the Met orchestra, and James Levine delivers a solid lead with decisive shading that is perfectly matched to the size and sound of the ensemble cast on stage - whether solo or chorus. This is a worthwhile DVD to own, and not the least of which reason for owning it is the pleasure of watching Pavarotti's hypnotic magic and natural performance and movement on stage. A review from OperaOnline.us.