For some time now I have been saying to anyone who wants to listen, as well as to many who do not, that Idomeneo is the one Mozart opera I have never really connected with (to forestall the question, I love Clemenza di Tito, as well as all baroque opera, so this is not an objection to opera seria or stylized music drama in general). Yet I persist in trying! On Tuesday night I was at the second performance of San Francisco Opera's latest production of the piece. Idomeneo & I remain unconnected.
Not that I don't see things to admire in it: mostly musical things. Eun Sun Kim led a crisp ensemble in music that was powerful & tender. San Francisco Opera had assembled a sterling cast – Matthew Polenzani in the title tole; Daniela Mack as his son Idamante; Ying Fang as Ilia, a Trojan princess loved by Idamante; Elza van den Heever as the volatile Elettra, in unrequited love with Idamante; Alek Shrader as the counselor Arbace – who all sang with beautiful sound, but beauty used to expressive purposes; the vocal fireworks were explosive, the yearning & sorrow genuine. (I have to give a special mention to Mack, who was singing despite some unannounced vocal cord issues; she could not continue singing during Act 3 & instead mimed the role while Laura Krumm sang offstage – kudos to both of them for doing so beautifully under physically difficult circumstances. During the curtain calls company director Matthew Shilvock explained the situation & introduced Krumm.)
Last night was an excellent performance of early prime Mozart, musically speaking. I know someone who was there last night after also hearing Saturday's opening, & he is currently planning a third & maybe fourth visit. But all he cares about is singing. He doesn't care about staging, or the drama, & he sits in the last row of the second balcony, a spot from which you can barely see what's going on way down on the stage anyway.
For people like me, who prefer the front row of the orchestra & consider opera a theatrical form, the production by Lindy Hume was less satisfying. I will say whatever role she may have had in helping the singers shape their characters & their interactions paid off; the performers were all convincing – though there were some oddities; for example, when Elettra, thinking she & Idamante are being sent off together, sings that although he loves another, she is going to turn that around & make him love her – when she sings that, surely Idamante shouldn't be standing there, directly addressed by her? What is he supposed to do with that? We don't know, because Mozart & his librettist Giambattista Varesco didn't give him any response. He just looks noble & stricken. But how could an honorable young man like Idamante not protest immediately that he loves Ilia, even if (he thinks) she doesn't return his love, & how could he proceed with the trip as if Elettra hadn't announced to him that she was going to seduce him?
The staging struck me as mostly Modernizing Update 101: there is a unit set, a large boxy room with large doors on the back & on the sides. Everything is overwhelmingly white, black, or gray (with the exception of a red cloth that gets carried around by Idomeneo when he is trying to sacrifice to Neptune in Act 3, & some green branches – inevitably, the rebirth of hope – carried by the chorus at the very end. But after 3 and a half hours, these bits of color didn't do much, at least for one exhausted viewer. There are projections against the walls of the room: some effective shots of the sea (some color here; lots of deep blues) at the beginning of the opera. During emotional moments, abstract blotches swirl around the walls, to match the inner tumult, a device that might have been more effective if it had been used less often. During emotional moments (Idomeneo's Fuor del mar, Elettra's D'Oreste, d'Ajace) characters will, naturally, tear off their outer garments. There are, of course, many chairs on stage. They get moved, re-arranged, sometimes thrown, occasionally sat in.
The costumes are mostly contemporary, with some odd touches: a couple of the guards, as well as some of the higher aristocracy, wear uniforms or suits surmounted by a shoulder cape of shiny black feathers. When Elettra & Idamanta are supposed to leave on their voyage, their outfits have odd golden filigree added to the back & shoulders. The clothes are almost all black, & struck me as drab & ugly. At the beginning of the opera, when the Trojan prisoners are being freed, they line up, sort of, & go up to a table where some guards give them envelopes, which, when opened, have a paper in them. I am unclear on what was supposed to be happening there. I assume it was meant to represent some sort of sign that they were now free (maybe the papers were new legal ID?) but it struck me as mostly the theatrical equivalent of busy-work, the kind of thing you do when you feel something needs to be happening on stage other than someone standing there singing, no matter how beautifully, a noble though perhaps slightly repetitious sentiment.
So the production wasn't helping things, in my view, but I have some issues with the opera itself. I have speculated to some that the reason I don't connect with Idomeneo is that we're promised a sea monster but he only shows up offstage. I'm only half-kidding about this, because the thing is, most opportunities for drama in this story are, like the sea monster, shoved offstage. The crux of the drama is that Idomeneo, returning to his kingdom of Crete after the fall of Troy, is caught in a huge & deadly storm &, apparently not having read as many fairy tales as I have, tries to placate Neptune by promising to sacrifice to him the first living creature he sees on land, which of course turns out to be his son. (Think of the dramatic fireworks Handel made out of a similar vow & a similar dilemma in Jephtha, & you'll see what's missing here.) In his sorrow Idomeneo, apparently not having read as much Greek mythology as I have, thinks he can outwit the god's anger by just sending Idamante away on a long trip. This doesn't work, of course, & the even angrier Neptune, deprived of his human sacrifice, sends a rampaging sea monster to attack the king's city.
Idomeneo doesn't tell his son, until the very end, about the vow. He just shuns him, orders him away, & generally rejects him. Presumably this is done to protect Idamante, who seems like the type to offer himself as a sacrifice if honor commands, but Idomeneo's evasive ways cause his son probably more pain than a straightforward explanation would have. What we end up with is hours of the father being abrupt & inexplicably (in the eyes of Idamante) unloving, while the son wonders unhappily what he did wrong. There isn't a lot of development there, mostly restatement. Some of the articles in the program-book note that Mozart's troubled relationship with his own father (or other father-figures) entered into his work here. On the one hand, sure, but on the other, so what? The only reason we have any interest in the troubled relationship of these long-dead men is that one of them created art that keeps our interest. And the art has to continue to hold our interest & to stand on its own apart from any psychobiography of the artist.
The motor of this drama is the anger of Neptune, but the drama's handling of it is fundamentally incoherent. Everything is driven by the sea god's implacable anger: the deadly storms, Idomeneo's vow, his attempt to evade fulfilling that vow, the attack of the sea monster. . . There is a daring & challenging indictment being drawn up about the cruelty of the gods &, by implication, the religion that surrounds them. And then, abruptly, near the end of the opera, the sting is removed: Neptune, having apparently looked at what year it is & realized that the alternative is to become nothing more than a fancy fountain ornament, decides he'd better get on board with the Enlightenment. So he announces that Love & Reason are Everything, & that his commands, which called pretty clearly for a human sacrifice or else, had been completely misunderstood & instead what he obviously meant was that Idomeneo should step aside as King & let Idamante take over after he marries Ilia. Elettra gets her big number & goes offstage, presumably to kill herself, thereby removing the last obstacle to a happy ending, if not for her then at least for everyone else. Well, not quite everyone: I guess it's too bad about those hundreds of people killed by the rampaging sea monster! Maybe the sea monster also misunderstood what Neptune wanted. (I am reminded of Jane Campion's The Piano, in which a sincere but barely plausible happy ending is tacked on to the story, completely undercutting everything we've just spent hours watching.)
So I remain unconvinced by Idomeneo. But if you want to hear some glorious music, sure, go up to the balcony, sit back, & bask in the sonic splendors. But you may want to keep your eyes closed. Check here for remaining performances.
No comments:
Post a Comment