Spent a fair amount of time today listening to Mozart's Idomeneo. Listening to the whole thing requires a few spare hours and, since I had them, I fruitfully used them for that purpose. The version was that conducted by John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists and I can't imagine hearing a better orchestra doing this stuff. They deliver total clarity and unbounded energy. The sound is fabulous.
I got hold of the cheapo cheapo box set of Gardiner doing the seven big Mozart operas a few months back and have played bits and pieces here and there. But unfortunately, though understandably, this bargain edition doesn't come with any of the librettos, though the pithy notes on each opera in the accompanying booklet are pretty informative. As a result I've not really settled to full length play-throughs of the full operas until now, having just acquired the seriously handsome tome: Seven Mozart Librettos - A Verse Translation by J.D. McClatchy. This means that my education in Mozartian opera is now officially underway.
I'm intending to listen to another three operas, in the order of composition, over the next two weeks and to say I'm looking forward to the experience would be an under-statement. In truth, I was a bit wary of Idomeneo being aware that as an opera seria this work represented a genre likely to prove difficult to access for my modern, under-educated musical sensibilities. I couldn't have been more wrong.
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