Idomeneo is a 181-minute television film of the Metropolitan Opera's first staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1781 opera Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante, produced by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and performed by a cast headed by John Alexander, Hildegard Behrens, Ileana Cotrubaș, Luciano Pavarotti and Frederica von Stade under the direction of James Levine. It was recorded live on 6 November 1982, and telecast live in the United States by the Public Broadcasting Service series Live from the Metropolitan Opera. It has been released on VHS video cassette, Laserdisc and DVD.
Background
In Greek legend, Idomeneus was the King of Crete, the son of Deucalion and the grandson of Minos and Pasiphaë. A suitor of Helen of Troy, he was a major figure in the war between the Greeks and the Trojans precipitated by Helen's departure from Greece with the Trojan Prince Paris. The Odyssey relates that after the Greeks' victory, he led his men through the perils of their journey home without losing a single one of them. Later writings relate that his voyage was afflicted by a violent storm, amidst which he vowed to Poseidon, the god of the sea, that if he was allowed to set foot on Crete again, he would sacrifice the first living thing that he encountered there. Poseidon granted his wish, but when his ship finally reached his island's shore, the first creature that he met was his son, Idamantes. His slaying of the Prince in accordance with his oath was followed by the outbreak of a plague. Blamed by his people for their misfortune, he was driven into exile in Sallentum in Calabria. Later he moved to Colophon in Anatolia, settling near the temple of the Clarian Apollo. One tradition claims that he was buried there on Mount Cercaphus, while Cretans came to venerate his memory at a grave in Knossos.
In 1780, while the 24-year-old Mozart was in the employment of Hieronymus von Colloredo, Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, he received a commission from the court of Karl Theodor, Prince-elector and Duke of Bavaria, to write an opera to be performed in Munich during the carnival season of 1781. Historians think that it was the court rather than Mozart that chose the tale of Idomeneus as a topic. Mozart based his composition upon a treatment of the legend that had been premiered in Paris in the carnival season of 1712: the tragédie lyrique Idoménée, which had a text by Antoine Danchet and music by André Campra. Giambattista Varesco, a chaplain at the Salzburg court, reshaped Danchet's libretto into a different text that was richer than Idomenée in the dramatic possibilities that Mozart craved, and which culminated in a happier ending.
Mozart's correspondence with his father records the evolution of his composition in detail. He effected several major revisions of his early ideas, some occasioned by the disappointing abilities of Anton Raaff and the castrato Vincenzo dal Prato ("Il nostro molto amato castrato Dal Prato", Mozart joked), the first Idomeneo and the first Idamante respectively. Such difficulties did not prevent Mozart from enjoying his work on his opera greatly, partly because the orchestra at Karl Theodor's court, which had accompanied the Prince to Munich after previously serving him in Mannheim, was the most expert in all Germany. Mozart's widow told a biographer that her husband's time in Munich had been the happiest of his life, and had left him with an abiding affection for the fruit of his labours there.
With Mozart on the podium, Idomeneo was premiered in the court theatre of the Munich Residenz on 29 January 1781, and repeated on 3 February and 3 March. The work received only one further staging in Mozart's lifetime, a production in Vienna in 1786 for which Mozart revisited his score to accommodate Idamante's being cast as a tenor. The work was first heard in the United States in 1947 at the Berkshire Music Festival in Tanglewood under the direction of Boris Goldovsky.
Modern productions of the opera have presented it in a variety of different versions. The Met's first staging in 1982 largely adhered to that conducted by Mozart in Munich 201 years earlier, but with four important exceptions. All were in act three. Elettra's aria "D'Oreste, d'Aiace" and Idomeneo's aria "Torna la pace", both cut by Mozart, were reinstated, and Idamante's aria "No, la morte" and a lengthy concluding ballet were omitted.
The televising of the Met's 1982 production was supported by the Texaco Philanthropic Foundation, with additional funding from the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation and the National Endowment For the Arts. The making of Deutsche Grammophon's DVD release of the production was supported by the Charles A. Dana Foundation.