Arranged by Richard Strauss
French Translation by Charles Spaak




Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Colossus (1808-12)

Idoménée .................................................... Rémy Corazza
Idamante ................................................ Jacqueline Sellier
Ilia ...........................................,................ Janine Micheau
Ismène ..................................................... Berthe Monmart
Arbace ................................................... Camille Mauranne
Le Grand-Prêtre ......................................... Lucien Lovano
La Voix ................................................... Marcel Vigneron

Les Choeurs et l 'Orchestre Radio-Lyrique
Gustave Cloëz, cond.

French Radio, circa 1960

XVIIIth. century opera seria, a genre to which Idomeneo firmly belongs, is essentially a glorification of monarchic power and of enlightened absolutism. For this reason, the liberal XIXth. century completely ignored Idomeneo. In the first half of our century, the political roots of opera seria mattered less but its form was deemed unacceptable by a public accustomed to more naturalistic conventions - as if naturalistic opera were not an oxymoron in itself.

So, in order to make it "acceptable" to modern audiences, Idomeneo was subjected to many disfiguring arrangements. Numbers were cut, re-ordered and transposed and sometimes new music, not by Mozart, was added, always without much success. The most famous of these arrangements is by Richard Strauss, used in this recording.

Only when the opera was restored to something like its original form did it gain a foot in the repertoire. In the last thirty years, most major companies have produced it, although more as an opera in need of perpetual revival rather than a repertoire item.

Act 1

Act 2, part 1

Act 2, part 2

Act 3

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