Idomeneo

Mozart’s first great opera, Idomeneo, is getting more attention lately; the very fine new recording from Harmonia Mundi and its star conductor René Jacobs (the cover of the recording is pictured above) is the first recording of it in several years, and the Canadian Opera Company will be performing it in the upcoming season. The new recording is one of the best available, and last time I was at L’Atelier Grigorian in Toronto the set (3 CDs and one bonus DVD) was being sold for the price of two regular-priced CDs. Those of you who saw Amadeus may remember that it is mentioned only as a “promising” work, but like everything in that movie, it fudges the facts a little. By the time he wrote Idomeneo, Mozart was no longer a promising young prodigy; he was 24 (which at that time wasn’t unusually young for a composer). Most of his previous operas had been the work of a composer with potential; with this opera, Mozart had finally developed into a really great composer, and he poured just about everything he had into the writing of it, using it as a showcase for all that he’d learned in his musical life.