Mozart: .Idomeneo.

[] Milne, Frittoli, Hunt Lieberson; Bostridge, Rolfe Johnson; Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Edinburgh Festival Chorus, Mackerras. Text and translations. EMI 5 572602

When Mozart wrote Idomeneo, his four classic repertory operas were still in the future. But in many ways, he never again wrote a work so adventurous and forward-looking. Long chains of numbers are unbroken, and some, such as the famous quartet, end in mid-phrase. Act II quickly moves from Elettra's "Idol mio" through a march, a chorus and a trio into a breathlessly fast finale that quite unexpectedly ends the act quietly. Mozart even wrote through a scene change, something he doubtless never tried again, because it remains a problem in opera houses to this day. He is extravagant in the orchestration too, with the piccolo player needed for only a few phrases and three trombonists used for only two lines of music. Supposedly opera seria was dying, but clearly word did not reach the twenty-four-year-old composer.

Anyone who conducts Idomeneo must choose what to perform from an abundance of material and must address the question of cuts. Charles Mackerras has made his choices carefully, and everything he includes contributes to the drama. Even the little C-major march in Act III has its function: taking his cue from the sotto voce marking, Mackerras makes it descriptive of the grief of Idomeneo rather than the incongruously jaunty piece it usually is. It now leads perfectly into the invocation of the priests, which has the quality of a real offering and has never sounded more inventive. The Act I celebratory music works itself into exhaustion, a signal of trouble to come. Similarly, Mackerras has examined each passage of secco recitative for its importance. The Ilia-Idamante exchanges are heard in full versions. This pays particular dividends in Act III, which in cut performances often has a "highlights" quality. Here, Mozart's carefully calibrated progression of secco to accompanied recitative, into solo song and long-awaited duet of voices suddenly cut off by the entrance of a new character, is a revelation. Mozart was both dramatist and director in such a passage. He revised some of the recitatives in Idomeneo (and Mackerras makes use of some of these shorter revisions), but not this passage. It's now possible to hear how most performances misrepresent the style and scale of this score. Only one of the ...