Erin Helyard and the Violons du Roy Meantime, our other Artistic Director has just been asked by Bernard Labadie to be guest conductor (from the keyboard) for the Québecois string ensemble Violons du Roy for a program in December, which is very exciting. It's a series of 8 concerts around Québec city. He’ll be working with a very fine soprano called Hélène Guilmette whose prior engagement is with Paul Dyer and the Brandenburg orchestra!

Mozart and his Idomeneo orchestra

The time in which Mozart wrote Idomeneo was the happiest of his life – so he told Constanze. He had actively sought out this commission. In a letter home to his father from a career-seeking visit in 1777 to Munich, he wrote “I should draw up a contract with Count Seeau (intendant of the court opera) along the following lines: to compose every year four German operas, some buffe, some serie, with a benefit night, as is the custom here....with my help the German national theatre would certainly be a success. When I heard the German Singspiel I was simply itching to compose.”

In addition, he had visited the Munich court many times, starting from his first tour out of Salzburg, aged 6, twice more as a child prodigy, and in 1774-5 when his opera buffa La Finta Giardiniera was performed during the carnival season. As well as having many appreciative friends and important contacts there, he also knew a number of first-class musicians in Mannheim. This was the home of the renowned Palatine orchestra which in 1778 had grown to 90 players, among which were a large amount of virtuosi and composers. I will talk about the Mannheim orchestra, because the two courts were amalgamated in 1778 and many of the excellent Mannheim players were therefore in Munich at the time of Idomeneo’s composition and performance.

For 35 years from 1742, Carl Theodor was the elector of Mannheim. He was one of the great patrons of science, commerce and above all of the arts, playing several instruments himself. He engaged the remarkable violinist and composer Johann Stamitz during 1741-57 to lead the orchestra – who subjected the string players to a rigorous training, as well as developing his compositional style and contributing to what was subsequently known as the ‘Mannheim school.’ This string-playing hothouse produced many of the great violinists of their time, including Ignaz Fränzl, Karl Joseph and Johann Baptist Toeschi, Jakob and Wilhelm Cramer, Stamitz’s sons, and Christian Cannabich – Mozart’s leader for Idomeneo.

Burney wrote of this orchestra in 1772: ”There are more solo players and good composers in this that perhaps in any other orchestra in Europe: it is an army of generals, equally fit to plan a battle as to fight it.” The string players were unusually united in that they were trained uniformly by Stamitz and later Cannabich, who succeeded Stamitz as musical director and was admired by Mozart for his conducting skills. They were known for their precision of attack, the ability to reflect the smallest dynamic nuance, and their uniform bowing. The composer Schubart wrote of Cannabich “He has invented a totally new bowing technique and possesses the gift of holding the largest orchestra together by nothing more than the nod of his head and the movement of his elbows. He is really the creator of the smooth tone characteristic of the Palatine orchestra. He is the inventor of all the magical devices that are now admired by the whole of Europe. ... No orchestra in the world has ever excelled the Mannheim. Its forte is a thunderclap, its crescendo a cataract, its diminuendo a crystal stream babbling away into the distance, its piano a breath of spring. The wind instruments are everything that they should be: they raise and carr or fill and inspire the storm of the strings.”

The current fashion in Paris at that time was personified by the composer Jean-Joseph Cambini and his symphonie concertante. Mozart wrote to his father about the symphonie concertante he wished to write for them and the travelling horn virtuoso Giovanni Punto. In the end the four performed together, but in a work by Cambini – possibly simply that Mozart lost the battle! It’s thought that the work Mozart wrote for them was the inspiration for, and possibly contributed musical material to, Ilia’s aria ‘Se il padre perdei’ with obbligato parts for the four wind instruments that Mozart wrote for Dorothea Wendling – quite a gift for the musical couple and their friends.

In addition, the clarinet player in Munich was Anton Stadler – whom Mozart later wrote the clarinet concerto for – and the whole group of wind players was later blessed with the Gran Partita.

Clearly, Mozart went to town in his orchestral writing for Idomeneo. There was a wonderful convergence between his freedom to write for this virtuoso orchestra, and his longings to develop opera seria to a new dramatic level – one where every subtle nuance of mood and action is described in musical terms. His good friend Friedrich Melchior von Grimm, the writer, who had suggested the Idomeneo and similarly themed Jeptha stories for operatic setting, had written “What I want to see painted in the tragedy of Idomeneo is that dark spirit of uncertainty, of fluctuation, of sinister interpretations, of disquiet and of anguish, that torments people and from which profits the priest”.

This is the most orchestrally conceived of all Mozart’s operas, and his opera seria approach was greatly enhanced by the addition of orchestral effects derived from French tragédie-lyrique. In the same year, the 81-year-old Rameau was directing his last great tragédies lyrique – les Boreades in Paris. According to Mozart’s pupil Joseph Frank, he “was always busy studying French operatic scores”, and when asked why, he answered “not for their melodies, but for their dramatic effects”. It is assumed that Mozart saw Rameau’s opera scores when in Paris.

Even the limitations of the his singers (for instance, the 24-year-old castrato Vincenzo dal Prato who had to be coached note by note by Mozart) meant that it fell to the orchestra to deliver the sureness of dramatic effect Mozart wanted.

One vivid instance of this is the rendition of the Oracle. Leopold Mozart, who was liasing with the librettist Varesco in Salzburg as his son composed the score, wrote this suggestion “I imagine you will choose low wind instruments to accompany the subterranean voice. How would it be if, after the slight subterranean rumble, the instruments sustained, or rather began to sustain, their notes, softly, and then made a crescendo such as might inspire terror, and during the decrescendo the voice would begin to sing? And there might be a terrifying crescendo at each phrase uttered by the voice”.

It was quite usual for Leopold and his son to work closely in this way, and Mozart scored this passage for just three trombones and two horns. As it was the only passage the trombones were used for, he had quite a battle with Seeau, the opera intendent, to stretch the budget for two minutes of music – he wanted the effect saved for just this moment. Unfortunately Seeau’s overstretched budget spoke louder - the first performance substituted horns and clarinets instead. (We are fortunate, despite our company’s name, to be delivering Mozart’s trombones in our 2006 Pinchgut performance).

The interest and excitement amongst instrumentalists who wanted to be in this production, some of whom are flying themselves back to Australia from their international careers, attests to the joy and satisfaction we all experience when rehearsing and performing in fine detail an opera of this quality.

Anna McDonald, who will lead Orchestra of the Antipodes in the production of Idomeneo.

 

Mark’s Year

Mark Tucker has arrived. He decided that it would be good to have some time to enjoy Sydney before rehearsals start. We asked him what he has been doing this year:

The past year has seen me involved in the rediscovery and staging of two Vivaldi operas, (L'Andromeda Liberata and L’Atenaide) with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, two Galuppi operas (Il Re Pastore in Moscow and L'Olimpiade for la Fenice in Venice) and a newly discovered Cavalli opera L'Ipermestra for the Holland Ancient Music Festival in Utrecht.

Leaving the baroque for the early romantic, I took on Manuel Garcia's one-man opera El Poeta Calculista. Garcia was the virtuosic tenor who created some of the major roles in Rossini's early operas. El Poeta was composed as a showcase for himself and it includes a duet for coloratura soprano and tenor in which he (& I) sang alternately each voice in ever increasing agility and range (tenor bottom A to soprano high B natural!!!).

On my return from Sydney I will be giving the first Moscow performance of a new work by the Russian minimalist composer Vladimir Martynov (Dances for Guido d'Arezzo): I have most of it in manuscript but the ending is to be rewritten for my voice. Lastly, I will be singing Elgar's Dream of Gerontius in Spain before returning probably home on Christmas Eve; I intend to open a few bottles of that lovely Australian wine I will have taken back from Sydney!