Mozart's Idomeneo at the SF Opera

A musically compelling and dramatically pathetic production of Mozart's early opera Idomeneo is receiving five performances at the San Francisco Opera this month. Between the exquisite conducting of Music Director Eun Sun Kim, the beauty of the prominent chorus, the variable quality of the soloists, and the drab, colorless Opera Australia production, it was a very mixed bag. Pictured above is the opening scene with the luminous soprano Ying Fang as the Trojan prisoner of war Ilia surrounded her fellow refugees in ugly, stylized modern costumes by Anna Cordingley. (All production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

The three-and-a-half hour production directed by Lindy Hume took place on a unit set of three walls with three doors, along with projections and a turntable that was theatrically pointless except for the storm scene above where Idomeneo and his crew are buffeted by the elements. Tenor Matthew Polenzani, who has given a number of great performances in San Francisco over the years, was not sounding as supple as usual singing Idomeneo, the King of Crete returning from the Trojan War. However, his voice worked for the character and Polenzani's musicianship was impeccable.

The basic plot device is that hideous old story of a god commanding a mortal to sacrifice their own child, as in Jehovah commanding Abraham to murder his son Isaac. In this case, it is Neptune demanding that Idomeneo sacrifice the first person he encounters on shore after surviving a shipwreck, which of course turns out to be his son Idamante. The character was sung by the usually splendid mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack, who was having serious vocal problems due to illness. At the second performance of the scheduled five, she mimed her way through the finale of the last act while Laura Krumm sang the part from offstage. Krumm sounded great and eventually replaced Mack in the third performance for the entire role.

To complicate the plot, there are two women who are in love with Idamante, Ying Fang as Ilia and soprano Elza van den Heever as Elettra, who has somehow wandered off from the cursed House of Atreus. Even though there is plenty of gorgeous music to sing as Ilia, the role itself is rather dull as she sings about how sad she is about everything, usually ending with thoughts of suicide. The role of Elettra, however, is crazed and Elza van den Heever made the most of it.

Tenor Alek Shrader as Arbace, the King's counselor, was luxury casting and he sounded wonderful, as did Adler fellow Samuel White as the High Priest of Neptune. It's too bad they had to compete with acres of white chairs that kept being moved around by the chorus and occasionally twirled around slowly by the turntable for no particular reason at all.

The 1781 opera was only performed twice during Mozart's lifetime, and wasn't even performed in the United States until 1957. The San Francisco Opera has produced it four times since 1977 in two previous productions, by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and John Copley, that were lovely and fairly static, but which didn't allow for the appearance of a huge sea monster without looking silly, even though the libretto explicitly has Neptune wreaking havoc through a sea monster when Idomeneo refuses to sacrifice his son. So there was hope, since the production consisted mostly of video projections, that we would finally get to see a Cretan version of Godzilla onstage, but the opportunity was lost and we saw more dull, textured imagery representing the mayhem instead.

In the original French tragedy on which the libretto was based, Idamante was sacrificed to appease Neptune, but in this Enlightenment operatic version of the tale, Neptune takes pity after murdering thousands on the island via the monster, and commands Polenzani to abdicate his throne and give it to Idamante and Ilia to rule together instead.

This makes Elettra go insane, and Elza van den Heever brought a jolt of excitement and energy to the stage, but it was too little, too late for this inert production.