After the outrage perpetrated upon Mozart’s greatest opera seria by Simon Rattle (see article 125), a friend who knows about these things recommended the 1991 recording by Sir Colin Davis and the same Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio. When the used triple CD arrived there were a number of delights at the outset. First was the recording location: the same Herkules Saal that was the scene of the recent crime. Then there were two of the soloists, an old acquaintance and an old friend. The acquaintance was the opera’s Ilia: Barbara Hendricks, a pretty Black girl who sat in front of me in German class at Juilliard for two years and who later had such a meteoric career based in France. The friend was Roberta Alexander in the role of Elettra. Remembering the fun we had recording the complete Mozart songs with my first fortepiano in 1985, I rubbed my hands in anticipation of the greatest mad aria ever composed. She didn’t disappoint. All the old passion and nuance were there.
The overture was another relief after the rushed mishmash of last December: a solid allegro, tight ensemble, sparkling sound. As the opera went on, there was an unfortunate tendency to languor, especially where alla breve was marked. It seems Sir Colin didn’t take Mozart’s extremely careful notation of tempi seriously. Numbers with the exact same time signature and tempo marking often got wildly different readings, and arbitrary, unnecessary tempo changes in the big recitatives with orchestra accompaniment were legion. In Munich in 1781 they didn’t have time to rehearse that kind of thing, even if the leader Cannabich had wanted it.
But at least the rushing from the conductor’s desk, which was so abhorrent in that live performance, was absent. The rushing – and that was the biggest irritation on these discs – was left to the orchestra and soloists. Excuse my incivility, but it’s incredible how defective even top classical musicians’ sense of rhythm sometimes is. Do they never dance, or listen to jazz or good popular music? Almost every longish note gets slightly shortened at the end – slightly diminished in size, the way old coins were shaved. The next bar line gets pounced upon, as if those involved were trying to hop a bus moving away from a stop. Winds, and especially trumpets, are the worst in this respect, with singers coming a close second. As an ex-oboist I can understand worrying about breath reserve, but for God’s sake man, keep the tempo! You're not a modern-day harpsichordist who has sacrificed tempo on the altar of personal expression. Even the strings played fast and loose with the beat, without any similar excuse.
Where was Sir Colin while this was going on? This must be why Lully, a stickler for strict dance rhythm, pounded the floor with his stick while conducting, even if it eventually killed him.
The wonderful ballet music at the end of the work, which initially takes up the theme of the final chorus and ends with the craziest finale Mozart ever composed, suffered less from internal rushing.* Did they record the orchestra-only bits at the beginning of the sessions, and get sloppy later, weary of the many takes with the singers?
It used to be the task of the orchestral harpsichordist to guard against this phenomenon. Many is the time I’ve held back a band in an attempt to succor a conductor who was either incompetent or desperate, with varying degrees of success, depending on how sensitive the orchestra was. Most notable in the “success" category – and this will seem equally implausible and immodest – was the last time I worked for Frans Brüggen’s “Orchestra of the 18th Century”. It was for a tour of Mozart’s Cosí fan Tutte. Brüggen in his old age had passed the baton to a younger man who shall remain nameless. The tour was a shambles until the penultimate concert in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Before the overture I quietly passed the word to a few people around me that I was going to lead. Some mysterious current passed though the orchestra. I played along everywhere, except the quietest passages, and the band listened. It was spectacular. For the last concert in The Hague I crept back into my shell of secco recitative, which, to my intense fury, often had an accompagnato of chatting orchestra members. It was another shambles.
I must report a couple of other problems with this quarter-century-old recording:
The Mexico-born singer who took the role of Idomeneo had wonderful tone, excellent breath control and clean runs, but he dragged almost everything as if it were bad Verdi or worse Wagner. His recitatives were Neapolitan arias, complete with sobs, sighs and slides.
A failure of engineering led to the first violins being nearly inaudible. Mozart’s brilliant writing for an instrument of which he had complete command and for the best orchestra of the era goes for nought.
The less said about the contribution of the harpsichordist and the quality of his instrument, the better.
Sir Colin, or his concertmaster, didn’t understand Mozart’s detailed markings for the strings, most egregiously so in regard to the delicate slur with staccatos. Leopold Mozart’s explanation in his Versuch couldn’t be clearer, and the book went into its third edition in 1787, seven years after his son composed Idomeneo.
The role of Idamante, the king’s son, is taken by a woman. I understand the old procedure of having the two leads swirling about in thirds in high tessitura. But a castrato’s voice was not that of a female, and Mozart chose a tenor for a repeat performance in Vienna. Due to the sad lack of singing eunuchs in these decadent modern times, we will never hear those duets as they were originally intended. Is it not high time to add “C” to “LGBTQ”?
But let me end on a positive note. First off: the chorus was excellent, and the choral soloists delivered some of the best singing of the production.
What with all the cuts, I struggled to follow along in the score I played from so often in the past. The piece really is too long, as they decided before the 1781 première in the Cuvilliés Theatre. The Neue Mozart Ausgabe presents Idomeneo, Ré di Creta as it was performed at the premiere, and gives all the original cuts, along with the many variants the composer struggled with, in the Anhang. The producers at Philips, or Sir Colin, insisted on even more cuts, presumably to create a better “listening experience” over three CDs, but they added four big numbers as an Anhang of their own.
Two are for the faithful retainer Arbace, and are wonderfully old-fashioned, in fitting with his character, which is something like a Greek chorus. They could have been by Haydn, except for the degree to which the orchestra parts were worked out. These arias were not cut in the first performances – and the decision to leave them out of the opera’s flow here is questionable – but supporting roles like this often get shortchanged.
The third bonus is an aria for Idamante which was no great loss to the whole. The fourth is a section from the big Act III scene where Idomeneo and his son engage in a psychological struggle about his upcoming execution. Sure, it held up the action, but what a masterpiece!
It is painful to think of the endless bickering about the libretto Mozart suffered through, and all the variants demanded of him, with so much of that magnificent compositional effort eventually lying on the cutting room floor. But now I’ve heard most of what is usually omitted, as if it was composed yesterday.
January 8, 2024
*It also contains the highest-flying of all “Mannheim rockets”, the orchestra’s specialty: a long crescendo over a driving, single-note bass. The post-opera, non-action ballet was ordered by the Frenchified elector, who had recently moved from Mannheim to Munich. This was the same Karl Theodor von Wittelsbach who had Mozart as his guest in Mannheim for a total of 176 days. Enamored of an orchestra Burney compared to “an army of generals” and of Aloysia Weber as well, the genius begged for a job. The answer was, “Es ist keine Vakature da, lieber Mozart.” (There is no vacant position, dear Mozart.) I respectfully submit that this was the greatest triumph of bureaucracy over common sense in the history of the world.
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