Idomeneo, Opera San Jose, Sept. 17 2011

Idomeneo is Mozart’s 11th opera, and his first great one. It’s rarely performed, perhaps because of the staging demands, perhaps because of the modern public’s lack of appetite for opera seria, an operatic form that was already going out of style in Mozart’s day. But based on this Opera San Jose production, it deserves far more exposure than it has today.

The Packard Humanities Foundation funded a historically accurate production. The foundation’s director, David Woodley Packard, is a professor of classics, with a particular interest in the time and place in which Idomeneo is set: the island of Crete, approximately 1200 BC, right after the Trojan War. Packard brought his knowledge of art and architecture, and that of his professional colleagues, to the production, ranging all the way from the massive set near the end of Act 3 down to the earrings worn by the performers. And scuttlebutt has it that more was spent on this one production than Opera San Jose normally spends in an entire year of four productions. There was even enough funding to permit a complete performance, no need to cut any music in order to bring the show in under 3 hours (I measured 3 hours 35 minutes).

Act I opens in the royal palace, with walls and columns decorated with historical authenticity. The palace floor consists of light brown, almost sandy, 4 ft x 4 ft tiles, which also serve well for the following scene at the seashore. Idomeneo and his shipmates have landed safely on the beach after surviving the wreck of their ship, whose mast and tattered sail can be seen upstage. The beach and ship are surrounded by a semicircular diorama.

Act 2 continues the diorama theme, but now the diorama is informed by the artwork from a piece of decorated 17th century BC pottery depicting the ships of the era. The original artwork was about 16 inches on a side; it has been very effectively recreated in large scale to fill the back of the stage. The scene change takes us back to the royal palace, but a different part, the king’s chambers, consisting of painted (though not decorated) walls and pillars, and a low bench for the king to sit on. Another scene change takes us back to the diorama, this time fairly abstract, looking crinkled cellophane. When the storm hits at the end of the act, strobe lights on the cellophane do a good job of depicting the storm.

Act 3 opens in a very simple set, apparently downstairs in the palace. It looks like a small room, seen at a 45° angle; through an open doorway (without door) we can see steps leading to the upper level of the palace. The scene changes to the most impressive one of the evening: a massive set representing the exterior of the palace of Knossos, again with walls and pillars, but there are (at least) three levels, with people standing on all the levels. (I had heard reports of four levels, but from the Grand Tier I could only see three.) In my preview I had made mention of the fact that Mozart saved the trombones for near the end, bringing them in to preface an announcement from The Voice. In this performance, we don’t get trombones, we get a thunderous statement from the Mighty Wurlitzer installed at the California Theatre, originally a 1927 movie palace. I read that for this performance they installed four new 32-foot organ pipes. (The organ could use more of them, but this performance only needed those four notes.) Following Elettra’s final aria, Idomeneo sings an aria in front of the curtain (and in front of a drop-down panel of artwork), an aria not included in my commercial recording. This aria has covered the final scene change, where they get rid of the palace and return us to the diorama, this time with three copies of a piece of art depicting bull-leaping.

Our cast:
Idomeneo: Alexander Boyer
Idamante: Betany Coffland
Ilia: Sandra Bengochea
Elettra: Jasmina Halimic
The Voice: Silas Elash
Conductor: George Cleve
Director: Brad Dalton

It was a fine cast to go along with a fine production. Everyone sang well, but I was particularly taken with the intense portrayals of Idamante and Elettra by Coffland and Halimic. Elettra is a particularly juicy role, she has a couple of rip-roaring arias to express her extreme displeasure at a Trojan slave (Ilia) rather than her, a Greek, being the one that Idamante is in love with. I had expected The Voice to be amplified and perhaps electronically modified, but Elash's sonorous bass voice filled the hall. It’s unfortunate that we got to hear The Voice for only about two minutes. (I had wondered where The Voice would spend the first two acts; he is not called for, and then does not even appear, until near the end of Act 3. As second intermission began, I ran into Elash descending from the upper balcony, on his way to his warm-up.) George Cleve, our local Mozart expert, led a first-rate orchestra.

Fantastic sets, wonderful costumes, great singing and playing, and first-class Mozart—what’s not to like? Well, the libretto, written by the chaplain at the court of Salzburg, something of an amateur at libretto-writing. Mozart’s music is superb at a moment-by-moment level, but as an entire work of art, it failed to leave a tremendous impact at the end of the evening. Somewhere between an alpha and a beta.