Two soldiers, Ferrando and Guglielmo, bet that their girlfriends will always be faithful philosopher Don Alfonso persuades them he can prove otherwise. Carlo Maria Giulini’s classic 1959 recording features premier-league singing and revelatory conducting. But in the end, he descends to hell while the remaining cast of cowards, rape victims and the violently bereaved live happily ever after. Morally ambivalent, the opera presents the philandering nobleman of the title as both villain and hero. Period instruments and wholehearted choral singing add bite to John Eliot Gardiner’s intense, characterful recording.ĭa Ponte’s playboy exploits were ideal qualifications for his retelling of the yarn of Don Juan. Loosening the strict formal conventions of opera seria, he reaches deep into the emotions of his mythical characters. Two further da Ponte operas, and final masterpieces The Magic Flute and The Requiem contain everything necessary to contradict Glenn Gould’s perverse judgement on Mozart.Īlthough Mozart complained of problems with Idomeneo’s first cast (describing the ageing Anton Raaff as being ‘like a statue’ in the title role), he created a breakthrough work. The plot’s wild doings are balanced against a score of great formal balance and musical logic, allowing Mozart to span everything from the absurd to the sublime in music that perfectly complements da Ponte’s onstage business. Five years later, the composer revolutionised Italian comic opera with The Marriage of Figaro, his first collaboration with a great librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte. Mozart worked wonders with a duff libretto, editing it into dramatic shape and stepping beyond the bounds of Italian opera seria to explore aspects of character and emotional extremes. Idomeneo only emerged during the scheduled rehearsal period. In 1780, Mozart was asked to write a serious opera for the Munich court, a huge boost for an ambitious composer saddled with the duties of cathedral organist in Salzburg.
Likewise, his Salzburg masses paved the way for the great sacred pieces of his Vienna years, the C minor Mass and Requiem among them. His early Italian operas and pieces for the German-speaking theatre rarely challenge existing conventions, but they set the ground for the mould-breaking works of his later years.
Mozart assimilated the essence of the existing models of music for stage and church, and raised them to new heights of inspiration.
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