Mozart: Idomeneo: rè di Creta
Libretto by
Gianbattista Varesco
Philip Langridge (tenor) - Idomeneo
Magdalena Kozená (mezzo-soprano) - Idamante
Christiane Oelze (soprano) -
Ilia
Anne Schwanewilms (soprano) - Elettra
Peter Hoare (tenor) -
Arbace
Glynedbourne Opera Chorus
Orchestra of the Age of
Enlightenment
Simon Rattle (conductor)
Peter Sellars (director)
Anish Kapoor (scenic designer)
Mark Morris
(choreographer)
Tuesday 8 July 2003
Glyndebourne Auditorium, Lewes,
England
A production of the Glyndebourne Festival
Opera
Like a production of Otello at La Scala or Fidelio at Theatre
an der Wien, there is something special about Idomeneo at Glyndebourne.
Mozart's first full-length opera may have premiered in Munich, but it was reborn
at the fabled English festival in 1951.
The ingredients of Idomeneo's success in Sussex were the devotion of conductor Fritz Busch, a great cast (including Sena Jurinac, Richard Lewis, Léopold Simoneau and Birgit Nilsson) and, of course, a glorious score which had been, at that time, unheard and unstaged. But looking back, another ingredient becomes apparent: as experienced back then, the opera ran only slightly more than two hours. Fifty-two years — and many a musicologist, historian and performance — later, Glyndebourne audiences this summer are hearing an unabridged Idomeneo, now swollen to almost four hours in length.
Mercifully, the music-making by Simon Rattle, the Glyndebourne chorus and the Orchestra of Age of Enlightenment was of the highest quality, making the 220-plus minutes as pleasant to the ear as possible. From the beautifully paced overture all the way to the restored ballet that closes the opera, Rattle and the musicians played without wavering in intensity or precision.
The singers were generally good, though they rarely made the music soar. In
the title role, veteran tenor Philip Langridge made a noble effort, but the
voice is now showing wear, his choppy singing unsuited for the long, decorative
lines of this lyric part. Dramatically, his Cretan king came across as mannered
and un-regal — when he sang of "a storm raging in his bosom," he simply
wasn't believable.
Magdalena Kozená and Christiane Oelze fared better as Idomeneo's son Idamante and his beloved, the Trojan princess Ilia: both created convincing vocal characterizations and their voices blended together nicely in their extended duets. But neither could make the most of her part, being hampered by Peter Sellars's direction (of which more later). Oelze was usually required to stand still while singing, while an interpretive dancer acted out her emotions. Kozená, on the other hand, ran around the stage, sang long passages on her back and took every opportunity to "act" in big theatrical gestures; her numbers were rarely dull, but never subtle. Kozená was not helped by her costumes: after wearing combat fatigues in Act I, she was dressed in what looked, from a distance, like blue nurse's scrubs, which didn't help keep up the illusion that this fetching young blonde was playing a strapping Greek soldier.
Anne Schwanewilms was the most unfortunately attired of anyone on stage, but
that didn't keep her from stealing the show as Elettra, Idamante's spurned
fiancée. Schwanewilms is a tall, imposing soprano who towered over everyone else
on stage, an awkwardness accentuated by her wardrobe. In Act I, her fiery red
double-breasted pantsuit made her look like Kim Cattrall's character from Sex
In The City; in Act II, she was dressed like Pat Nixon in a fuddy-duddy pink
skirt set. These costumes, combined with Schwanewilms's height, made her seem
more like a mother figure to Idamante than a spurned lover, which killed all the
tension in that side of the romantic triangle. Yet Schwanewilms ignored these
obstacles, letting her big, Germanic voice fly. While being pulled down into the
underworld in her final aria, "D'Oreste, d'Aiace," Schwanewilms communicated
genuine fury — and provided the evening's only truly exciting aria.
With capable singers and excellent pit musicians, Glyndebourne's Idomeneo let a listener savor some of the 18th century's finest theatrical music. Unfortunately, it ofers some less-than-exalted dramaturgy, from both that century and our own.
First, there is Gianbattista Varesco's libretto, which was disparaged as clumsy and problematic even back in 1951 and does not improve at greater length. Then there is the much-anticipated collaboration of director Peter Sellars and artist Anish Kapoor. Kapoor's set design is a modified version of his giant sculpture Marsyas, which was the talk of the London art world when it filled the Tate Modern's huge Turbine Hall in the fall of 2002. His bright red, stretched-plastic cavities are impressive in large scale but seem rather impotent when reduced in size. What a large, inflamed orifice has to do with Trojans and Greeks will likely be cocktail chatter for months in British opera circles, but as a fertile backdrop for dramatic action, Kapoor's set lost relevance after only a few minutes.
Sellars, in his usual fashion, updated the opera to the present: in rough terms, Idomeneo became George W. Bush, his confidant Arbace was Donald Rumsfeld, the Greeks were American GIs and the Trojan women wore burqas, presumably as citizens of a recently defeated Islamic state. Does the libretto support this? Not really, but many stranger directorial conceits have been attempted and a few have even worked. But rather than translating the emotions and themes of Idomeneo into modern times, as he has done brilliantly in his best work, Sellars chose simply to underline any bits of the text that could be construed to have "relevance" to current world events. Any part of the drama that doesn't fit into that scheme was simply left out to dry.
Sellars did create a few moments of magic, such as the Idomeneo-Idamante reunion and an ocean storm enacted visually by the chorus. But these served mainly to accentuate frustration at the clichés that crashed regularly upon the stage like so many waves. When a character spoke about his heart, he usually held his hands over the left side of his chest; when people mentioned prayers, hands were clasped together; every time the heavens were invoked, you could be sure someone (if not everyone) would soon point or look upwards; when Elettra mentioned "vipers and serpents," a dancer began making "snake arms" around her. The clichés just kept coming, all amidst bafflingly intrusive lighting changes. It was almost as if the entire production was an interpretive performance for the hearing impaired, though Sellars's gestures had neither the grace nor the clarity of sign language.
Despite all this folly, the production is not the utter disaster that some
reports have claimed. Yes, it is a bit silly and it fails to make any coherent
statement about Mozart, Idomeneo or the current political climate, but at
least it is an ambitious failure. The problem is that any performance this long
has to be compelling for more than a couple of scenes. At two hours, these
dramaturgical flaws would likely seem inconsequential, but as I suffered through
the 13th minute of Arbace's aria during an Act III of Wagnerian length, foibles
of Regieoper began to feel like crimes against humanity. If brevity is
the soul of wit, this Idomeneo had almost no brevity or wit —
and, consequently, very little soul.
Finally, when the drama (such as it was) was over, the 20-minute ballet
sequence began. Mark Morris's choreography here is not his most lively or
inspired, but it was simple, elegant and easy on tired eyes. While one might
imagine the orchestra and maestro, after 200 minutes of Mozart, being as
fatigued as the audience, a glimpse toward the pit revealed Rattle still
grinning and waving about, looking like a teenager conducting along with the
stereo tuned to full volume.
