UNLIKE ANY OTHER OPERA, AND WORTH THE TICKET
by KEN WINTERS
The Globe and Mail
May 11, 2010 Tuesday
Canada
Mozart’s Idomeneo The Canadian Opera Company Isabel Bayrakdarian,
soprano Krisztina Szabo, mezzo-soprano Paul Groves, tenor Harry Bicket,
conductor At the Four Seasons Centre In Toronto on Sunday
Mozart was 25 in 1781 when he composed his 13th opera, Idomeneo,
King of Crete, a work like no other, either of Mozart’s or
of anyone else’s. It had only three performances in its first
production, prepared and conducted by Mozart himself in Munich at the
Residenztheater. The sheer originality of what he had written left him
conflicted, and for the rest of his short life, he continued to fuss
with it, writing fresh bits, rewriting others, dropping still others,
never himself fully staging it again.
It has not really entered the repertoire in a big way to this day,
but the superior fascinations of its music keep it disturbingly in
mind as it grafts intricate and exquisite excesses of French and
Italian style onto the plain, intensely human yet curiously hieratic
and formal simplicities of the epoch-making operas of Gluck.
Posterity has followed Mozart in continuing to fuss about Idomeneo. No
less a pragmatist than Richard Strauss lovingly rearranged it to suit
himself in 1931. But only in the latter half of the 20th century did
the rare magnificence of its choruses, the singular harmonic richness
and eloquence of its orchestra, the beauty of its vocal ensembles and
the poignancy of its arias finally persuade scholars and connoisseurs,
and gradually the public, that Idomeneo is an uneasy but distinct
masterpiece.
Strengths outnumber weaknesses in this COC production, which employs
the New Mozart Edition’s Idomeneo edited by Daniel Heartz.
The set is a single, strikingly designed seaside temple to Neptune
by Germany’s Siegfried Mayer, transformed and dramatized by scrim
curtains and moveable panels, with magnificent lighting by France’s
Francois de Carpentries, who is also, with more variable success,
the stage director. Among de Carpentries’s few shortcomings is his
decision to afford us no glimpse of the horrifying sea monster at the
end of Act 2. Belgian designer Karine Van Hercke found her costumes
somewhere between ancient Greek and present-day no-name urban – a mixed
blessing, but they light well.
Sandra Horst’s COC chorus is absolutely stunning, albeit with much
Mozart choral writing to be stunning about – most notably the great
chorus in which the Cretans express their profound horror and dismay
that King Idomeneo should have to slay his own son, Idamante, to
appease a cruel and furious Neptune. This is music which in darkness
and power reaches ahead to Verdi in the next century.
The principal singers are, without any serious exception, outstanding,
with virile American tenor Paul Groves’s superb Idomeneo, delectable
Armenian-Canadian soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian’s elegant Ilia and
the excellent Irish-Canadian tenor Michael Colvin’s blind Arbace –
Idomeneo’s confidant – heading the list. The brilliant American soprano
Tamara Wilson’s poisonous Elettra and the strong Hungarian-Canadian
mezzo-
soprano Krisztina Szabo’s convincing Idamante are not far behind. Up
and coming Canadian tenor Adam Luther is an imposing High Priest of
Neptune and South African-Canadian baritone Neil Craighead is suitably
eerie as the oracular voice of Neptune, rising anonymously from the
back of the chorus.
English conductor Harry Bicket penetrates the by no means simple
workings of Mozart’s extraordinary orchestral score – which has the
omnipresent aspect, even more than the chorus, of a major, opinionated
Machiavellian character in the piece.
Over all, the production is a bit static and heavy in the continuity
of the long, unbroken first two acts. But musically and dramatically,
dawn breaks in the third, with its gorgeous love duet for Idamante and
Ilia and the fabulous quartet that ensues when Idomeneo and Elettra
find them. Buoyed by such music, I think you’ll conclude that Idomeneo
is unlike other Mozart or any other opera, and richly rewards a visit.
Idomeneo runs until May 29, with a special performance May 19 by the
young singers of the COC’s Ensemble Studio.