Rudin Leads, Mozart Opens ?€?Opera Masterpieces?€™

The Moscow Philharmonia opens its annual series entitled “Opera Masterpieces” on Saturday with a concert performance at Tchaikovsky Hall of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Idomeneo,” a work that has apparently never before been performed in Moscow. Taking part will be the Musica Viva Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Choir, led by Alexander Rudin, and singers from abroad in the opera’s four major roles.

Generally considered Mozart’s first great opera, “Idomeneo” was composed as entertainment for the Carnival season of 1781 on commission from the Elector of Bavaria and given its premiere in January of that year at Munich’s Cuvillies Theater, the tiny gem of a court theater that suffered virtually total destruction in World War II but was reborn in a meticulous reconstruction at the end of the 1950s.

The tale of “Idomeneo” takes place on the island of Crete, shortly after the close of the Trojan War. Its principal characters are Idomeneo, king of the island, a pair of lovers from opposite sides of the recently ended conflict, Ilia, daughter of King Priam of Troy, and Idomeneo’s son, Idamante, as well as Electra, Princess of Argos, who jealously attempts to claim Idamante for herself. The complicated plot involves terror from the sea, intervention of the god Neptune and a narrowly averted human sacrifice.

“Idomeneo” pretty much faded from view within a few decades of its premiere, but enjoyed a revival in the early 1930s in a much revised version by the composer Richard Strauss. Only after World War II, however, did it become widely presented in its original form, its title role eventually taken up by such renowned tenors as Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. But not until last February, at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater, did the opera receive its first staging by a Russian company.

The basic style of “Idomeneo” is that of “opera seria,” an Italian genre popular from the beginning of the 18th century but already considered old-fashioned by the 1780s, featuring elaborate arias and long recitatives and intended mainly for royal and aristocratic court performance. There is also much in “Idomeneo” that follows the prevailing and quite different French style of opera. Whatever may be its stylistic origins, “Idomeneo” is marked most of all by the sheer beauty of Mozart’s writing, particularly in the arias for Ilia and Idamante and the choral episodes.

“Idomeneo” is quite a long opera and rarely if ever performed on stage or in concert without substantial cuts. “We are of course making cuts,” Rudin, the conductor, said during a break in rehearsal earlier this week. “Among the things we are leaving out is the dance music, which happens to be the only part of the score the orchestra has ever played before.”

In recent seasons, under Rudin’s direction and with help from the distinguished English conductor Sir Roger Norrington, Musica Viva has gone far toward mastering an authentic 18th- and early 19th-century style of playing, which it has applied with notable success in performances of George Frideric Handel’s opera “Orlando” and the oratorios of Joseph Haydn. In those earlier times, instrumentalists, and particularly string players, used little if any vibrato. Musica Viva won’t be playing entirely without vibrato in “Idomeneo.” “But we will be keeping it to a minimum,” Rudin said.

As a result of a heavy schedule of recent concerts, rehearsal time for the opera has been at a premium. “I’m relying heavily for the performance on all of the experience the orchestra has already accumulated in playing Mozart,” Rudin said. Also to compensate for the short rehearsal time, Rudin is counting on the prior experience of his team of foreign soloists. Taking on the title role will be Croatian tenor Kresimar Spicer, who made a very favorable impression in the Musica Viva performance last May of Haydn’s oratorio “The Seasons.” Also to be heard will be Latvian Inga Kalna, a leading soprano of the Hamburg State Opera, as Ilia, New Zealand-born, British trained Sarah Castle, as Idamante (a role originally written for castrato, but in these more humane times given over to a female mezzo-soprano), and Dutch soprano Henrietta Bonde-Hansen, as Electra.

Musica Viva is due to appear again Dec. 12, this time at the Moscow Conservatory under the baton of Norrington, with a program made up of two familiar works, Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 (with Alexei Lyubimov as soloist) and Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (the “Pathetique”), in performances to which the conductor will be applying his expertise in period style by brushing off the accretions of time and approximating the sound produced by orchestras when the works were first played in the latter half of the 19th century.

“Idomeneo” (Idomenei) will be performed Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. at Tchaikovsky Hall, located at 4/31 Triumfalnaya Ploshchad. Metro Mayakovskaya. Tel. 299-3957/232-5353, www.meloman.ru.