page_title: Idomeneo (Luciano Pavarotti film)
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: Idomeneo (Luciano Pavarotti film) / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: From Kennedy center honors December 2, 2001 Washington D.C. Photographer: John Mathew Smith Copyright 2001
context_page_description: Idomeneo is a 181-minute television film of the Metropolitan Opera's first staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera, produced by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and performed by a cast headed by John Alexander, Hildegard Behrens, Ileana Cotrubaș, Luciano Pavarotti and Frederica von Stade under the direction of James Levine. It was recorded live on 6 November 1982, and telecast live in the United States by Public Broadcasting Service. It has been released on VHS video cassette, Laserdisc and DVD.
context_section_description: Donal Henahan reviewed the production from which the film derived in The New York Times on 16 October 1982. Idomeneo, he wrote, was maybe the best of all baroque operas. The Met's new staging of the work – the first in its 99-year history – was among the finest of its recent offerings, notable for its "sheer depth of vocal talent, grasp of the grand style and impressive décor".
  The cast was a strong one, with Hildegard Behrens incandescent as Elettra and Timothy Jenkins a stentorian High Priest ("although his upper notes tended to be nasal and strained"). None of the principals was gravely disappointing either in ensembles or when singing solo. Luciano Pavarotti eschewed Mozart's protracted, technically taxing version of "Fuor del mar" for a shorter, easier version of the aria, but he did at least deliver it "with ardour and plangent tone".
  This was a choice that other tenors customarily made too, but at odds with the production's overall philosophy of academic rectitude. In general, James Levine adhered to the urtext of the opera performed at its premiere in Munich in 1781. Among his deviations from it were his omission of Idamante's Act Three aria "No la morte" and his cutting of the lengthy ballet that Mozart had composed as a finale. He also reinstated Elettra's exit aria "D'Oreste, d'Aiace" and Idomeneo's "Torna la pace", numbers which Mozart himself had discarded before Idomeneo was first heard. Levine's rendition of the opera was thus not entirely sympathetic to its idiom and epoch, but was suitable for a modern production for an audience like the Met's.
  Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's staging was stylistically mixed. He set the opera amidst what looked like the crumbling remains of buildings constructed by the ancient Greeks, and yet dressed his singers in apparel reminiscent of the eighteenth century. Ilia was the exception to the rule, clothed in a flowing, cream-coloured dress that did seem appropriate to the classical era. Piranesi-like scenery was presented on a series of painted scrims as if in an outsized magic lantern show. Soloists were required to strike histrionic poses of pain, regret or joy after being moved hither and thither like pieces on a chess board. The magnificent chorus was made to perform like a ballet company imitating the children's game of playing at being living statues. Initially, Ponnelle's direction of his artists seemed obtrusive and bizarre, but one soon became accustomed to it, and its emphatic exposition of the opera served Mozart very well. This was not to deny that some of the producer's contrivances were disconcerting. For example, there was a point at which the High Priest and his underlings looked like members of the Académie Française. Perhaps Ponnelle had been influenced by Daniel Heartz's suggestion that Mozart had conceived his opera as something closer to French tragédie lyrique than to Italian opera seria.
  Whatever one thought of Ponnelle's contribution to the evening, he allowed his singers to communicate the profound feelings latent in Mozart's music. Frederica von Stade was "marvellously convincing" as the youthful prince (a part initially written for a castrato and later revised for a tenor). Ileana Cotrubaș was impressive from Ilia's first note to her last. Hildegard Behrens "flung herself into the villainous role of Elettra with vocal and dramatic abandon, actually stealing the last act from under Mr Pavarotti's nose". Her exit, carried off after a furious tantrum rigid with catatonia, was almost enough to make one believe that one was witnessing a genuine medical emergency.
  On the whole, the production presented an ensemble in harmony with Mozart's spirit. John Alexander was a good, "if somewhat gritty-toned" Arbace, coping well with the ornamentation in arias frequently cut as dramatically superfluous. Pavarotti mostly eschewed embellishments – a couple of straightforward trills that he did attempt came across as somewhat feeble. Nevertheless, he sang with a degree of aristocratic suavity that was suitable for a sovereign, "and if he slid into tones occasionally, there 
caption: Luciano Pavarotti
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