San Francisco Classical Voice

OPERA REVIEW An Inspiring Core for the Met's Idomeneo

January 31, 2002

Anne Sofie von Otter ( Idamante)

Plácido Domingo (Idomeneo)

By Robert Commanday

Wonders to relate, there was a near-ensemble performance at the Metropolitan Opera last Thursday, an event for a major opera company almost as rare as, for the sports world, an exciting Superbowl. It was accomplished moreover with Mozart — and who deserves it more? — the Met's final performance of Idomeneo in the current season.

The work of the mature if young Mozart (the year was 1780, he was 24), Idomeneo is by any measure a masterpiece and an original. Because of its classical theme and much of its structure, its relationship to the earlier opera seria is always cited. While drawing on that tradition, Mozart went far beyond, creating a work of deep human values, dynamic and far from stylized, lyric tragedy indeed, dipping into the currents of contemporary theatrical drama. All the qualities of his music are found in it, deeply expressive, with the rich orchestration, inspired concertante parts for the woodwinds, brilliant pacing and continuity, and the exquisite dramatic timing characteristic of the Mozart opera.

The realization in this performance came from a core comprised of Anne Sofie von Otter, the Swedish soprano, in the role of Prince Idamante, Placido Domingo, as Idomeneo, King of Crete, and a conductor of skill, experience, and vital, incisive style, Scott Bergeson. Other elements that were less than ideal, the Ilia of the inexpressive soprano Hei-Kyung Hong and some typically dumb things in the staging didn't matter or detract much in the overall, the performance was so tightly knit.

A commanding voice and presence

Idomeneo is perfectly suited to Domingo's maturity. Unique among Mozart tenor roles, this one is not florid and high, calling for a slender and lithe voice, but a part that wants the heft and heroic thrust of Domingo's instrument, the warmth, colors and intensity he commands and delivered with his musicality and characteristic fervor. His presence was strong in sustaining Idomeneo's torment over his tragic vow to Neptune that commits him to sacrifice his son, the first person he encountered when cast up on the beach.

Von Otter gave a noble and stirring account of Idamante, fervent in his early expression of love for Ilia, hurt and confused by the inexplicable rejection of him by his father who cannot bring himself to embrace his imminent victim, and ultimately resolute and courageous. Her singing, beautifully nuanced, went into the melody, bringing the character and the dramatic moment alive. Between the feeling created by van Otter's Idamante and the anguish Domingo kept hanging in suspense, the performance was made.

Hei-Kyung Hong's soprano was large and true enough, but just straight, uninteresting and musically plain. Her best was the contribution to the Act III duet with Idamante and the ensuing quartet, “Andró ramingo e solo,” a treasure. Mark Oswald and Antonio Barasorda gave creditable performances as Arbace and the High Priest. Alexandra Deshorties, a young Canadian soprano who was the Elettra, sang in a fine, evenly produced and resilient voice but well enough was not left alone. Her acting the villainess and jealous harridan with witchy gesticulations, facial gestures and head motions out of sit-coms and bad movies could only be handled by the viewer's looking away and just listening.

A happy ending not enough

Capping a series of missteps that ranged from encouraging Deshorties in this display to equipping Hong with an arsenal of upper body setting-up exercises, to his conventional choreography for the chorus, the director David Kneuss arrived at a pratfall. He did his best to try and end the show in laughter, the happy ending of Varesco's libretto apparently not being enough. (Conceivably, he was following the stage book of the production's originator, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, but I doubt it.) During Elettra's mad scene aria, “D'Oreste, d'Ajace,” (a scena anticipating the Queen of the Night), Kneuss has Deshorties flinging herself about, wrestling with and thrusting off Arbace and the High Priest as they try to restrain her, and finally plopping to the floor on her back, presumably dead. The Witch of the North redux. Elettra must either be alone with her rage, or the stage must be darkened, the other characters frozen.

The production, an old one, designed and produced by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, used 18th century sketches and engravings of Greek ruins and an idealized Greek city, and served well enough. A enormous head of Neptune, an image taken from a sculpted head, was projected often, a bit too often, onto the scene drops whenever the threatening god was invoked or came to Idomeneo's mind. Later the head appears as a full-scale construction that moves upstage and down as disaster threatens the Cretans.

As one accustomed to New York City cultural life might expect, much of this Idomeneo was lost on an audience that, typically for the Met, the New York Philharmonic and other New York big ticket institutions, seemed musically dense and insensible. Hundreds in the orchestra section deserted before the last act. While James Levine has done wonders for the orchestra and musical standards at the Met (excepting its chorus), his “developing” the audience, in the best sense of the word, has not been a success. He too must live in hope that the Met's producing just such efforts as this, might eventually turn the tide.

(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)