Cambridge Opera Journal, 24, 3, 229248

doi:10.1017/S0954586712000262

6 Cambridge University Press, 2012

Two into Three Wont Go? Poetic Structure

and Musical Forms in Mozarts Idomeneo
TIM CARTER
Abstract: By the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the typical Metastasian two-stanza
aria text could be set to music in one of two ways: in the ternary form typical of the earlier
da capo aria (stanzas 121) or in a binary one (stanzas 1212). Why did Mozart choose
one form over the other in Idomeneo (1781); what does this tell us about the role of his librettist, Giovanni Battista Varesco, both before and after the composer left Salzburg for Munich
to nish composing the opera and to prepare its performance; and how might these issues
enable some rational inquiry into questions of music and drama?

The overture to Idomeneo moves seamlessly to the rst scene of Act I as Ilia enters
to introduce herself, and the operas plot, to the audience. When will her harsh
misfortunes end? She is a Trojan princess captured by the Greek Idomeneo,
King of Crete, and she has survived a violent storm at sea which she hopes has
obliterated Idomeneo and his eet as revenge for the destruction of Troy. But her
rescue was thanks to Idomeneos son and heir, Idamante, with whom she has
fallen in love. This has placed her in several quandaries: loving a Greek means
betraying her family, and while she should wreak vengeance on Idamante, she
owes him gratitude for saving her life. Moreover, she fears that Idamante is in
fact enamoured of the wicked Greek princess Elettra, who therefore is her rival
for his affections. Ilia is indeed oppressed from all sides.
We are given a great deal of information in 24 lines of text (in the versi sciolti,
mixing loosely rhymed seven- and eleven-syllable lines, typical for musical recitative): Ilia tells us all we need to know save the forthcoming plot-twist that to
escape the storm just described, Idomeneo has made an incautious vow to
Neptune that should he land safely on Crete, he will sacrice the rst person he
sees (who then turns out to be his son, Idamante). This recitativo stromentato also
builds to a climax as Ilias heart is torn by the conicting emotions of vengeance,
jealousy, hate, and love (vendetta, gelosia, odio, ed amore), setting the stage for
an aria (so called in the libretto):
Padre, germani, addio!
voi foste, io vi perdei.
Grecia, cagion tu sei.
E un greco adorero`?

Father, brothers, farewell!

You lived, [but] I have lost you.
Greece, you are the cause.
And yet shall I love a Greek?

Dingrata al sangue mio

so` che la colpa avrei;
ma quel sembiante, oh Dei!
odiare ancor non so.

As ungrateful to my blood
I know that I shall bear the blame;
but that face [i.e., Idamantes], oh gods,
I do not yet know how to hate.

I am most grateful to Mark Evan Bonds, Bruce Alan Brown, Paul Corneilson, and Julian Rushton
for their comments on various earlier versions of this text.

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Tim Carter

This text is in the standard two-stanza format canonised within Metastasian opera
seria: two isometric strophes (four seven-syllable lines) each with the same rhyme
scheme (indeed, here the same rhymes), and with the last line of each strophe a verso
tronco, where the weakstrong end-accent rather than the strongweak one of the
prior versi piani allows for a clear cadential articulation.1 Were Handel setting it,
he would have done so in the form of a da capo aria: an A section for stanza 1, a B
section for stanza 2, and then a da capo (or dal segno) return of the A section, ending
the setting with the reprise of the rst stanza. My essay seeks to explore how and
why Mozart could do something different.
Idomeneo in context
Mozart received the commission for an opera seria for the 178081 Carnival season
at the Munich (formerly Mannheim) court in the summer of 1780.2 Deciding on
Idomeneo required agreement on three main issues with the courts theatrical Intendant, Josef Anton, Graf Seeau von Muhlleuten. First, the subject of the opera:
to be adapted from Antoine Danchets tragedie en musique, Idomenee, set by Andre
Campra in 1712 and revised in 1731. Second, a plan outlining the drama and
mapping in some detail (it seems) the arias, ensembles, and choruses; subsequent
amendments to, or deviations from, the plan would then require separate approval.3 And third, the librettist: Giovanni Battista Varesco although he had
scant experience in theatre poetry, as a Jesuit-educated Italian and chaplain to the
Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg he was conveniently positioned to work directly
with the composer. Varesco and Mozart must have set down to work quite quickly,
and it is clear that a decent amount of the music of Idomeneo was composed in
Salzburg in the autumn.
However, the Munich court typically expected its opera composers to spend a
signicant amount of time on site to prepare a production. Mozart left Salzburg
on 5 November 1780, arriving in Munich the next day, and he threw himself
into an intense three months of meetings and rehearsals not to mention composing prior to the (slightly delayed) premiere of Idomeneo on 29 January 1781.
1 In Italian metrics, versi tronchi have one syllable less than their nominal syllable count: although
the line E un greco adorero` contains only six actual syllables it is still reckoned to be a sevensyllable line (settenario).
2 The death of Elector Maximilian III Joseph, Duke of Bavaria, on 30 December 1777 led to
the eventual amalgamation of the Mannheim and Munich courts under Elector Palatine Carl
Theodor. Mozart knew the Mannheim musicians well from his visits there in 177778; most
of them moved to Bavaria with the court. As for the genre of Idomeneo, many have noted that
calling it an opera seria is somewhat problematic, but it serves no present purpose to quibble,
even if the libretto is conventionally styled a dramma per musica.
3 The plan is now lost, but Leopold Mozart refers to it in his letters to Mozart of 11 and 18
November, and 22 December 1780. For the history of Idomeneo and its sources, see Daniel
Heartz, The Genesis of Mozarts Idomeneo, Musical Quarterly 55 (1969), 119; Stanley Sadie,
Mozart: The Early Years, 17561781 (New York, 2006), 52347, which supersedes Sadie,
The Genesis of an operone, in W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo, ed. Julian Rushton, Cambridge Opera
Handbooks (Cambridge, 1993), 2547; and my In the Operatic Workshop: The Case of
Mozarts Idomeneo, in Opera and Myth, ed. Sabine Lichtenstein (Amsterdam, forthcoming). The
last also discusses briey the aria-related issues developed in greater depth in the present essay.

Poetic Structure and Musical Forms in Mozarts Idomeneo

231

Clearly he relished this close collaboration with the singers, the orchestra, and the
backstage team, even as he wrestled with them over innumerable issues large and
small concerning the design and staging of the opera. But there was one disadvantage: Varesco remained in Salzburg. Therefore, in those many cases where adjustments were required to the libretto, Mozart had to negotiate with him by correspondence, using his father, Leopold, as an intermediary. This was not entirely
convenient, but it had a fortunate consequence for posterity: the rich trove of
letters between father and son (from 8 November 1780 to 22 January 1781) that
document many of the musical and dramatic choices concerning Idomeneo that
Mozart made in Munich.4 These letters also reveal that Varesco eventually became
deeply annoyed over the whole enterprise, at least if we are to believe Leopolds
reports to his son. Although Mozart later was willing to consider working with
him again on the composers rst intended opera buffa for Vienna after he moved
there permanently the aborted Loca del Cairo (1783) it is clear that their
eventual disagreements over Idomeneo, and the librettists increasing reluctance to
respond to them, created difculties at the time.5
It seems that Mozart took to Munich a score comprising the bulk of Act I of
the opera, and at least some of Act II;6 he felt comfortable enough writing the
choruses and instrumental music where the staging was clear, and even recitatives
and ensembles, but in the case of arias he would write only for those of the
intended cast whose voices he already knew, such as Dorothea Wendling (Ilia)
and her sister-in-law, Elisabeth Wendling (Elettra). He would have wanted to
defer the composition of anything substantial for the singers he rst encountered
only in Munich, including Vincenzo dal Prato (Idamante) with whom he was
distinctly unimpressed and Domenico Panzacchi (Arbace).7 This was common,
and commonsense, practice. The case of the singer who played Idomeneo, Anton
Raaff whom the composer certainly knew before is more problematic. When
Mozart started writing Idomeneo, he was working on the assumption that the role
4 Reference here to letters between Mozart and his father are made by date; they are accessible in
the most recent edition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen: Gesamtausgabe,
ed. Wilhelm A. Bauer, Otto Erich Deutsch, Joseph Heinz Eibl, and Ulrich Konrad, 8 vols.
(Kassel, etc., 2005); and in Emily Anderson, ed., The Letters of Mozart and His Family, 3rd edn
(London, 1985). In general, I cite only the English translation.
5 As Mozart admitted when proposing Loca del Cairo to his father in his letter of 7 May 1783:
So I have been thinking that unless Varesco is still very much annoyed with us about the
Munich opera, he might write me a new libretto for seven characters.
6 For these materials, see Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Idomeneo, K.366, with Ballet, K.367: Facsimile of
the Autograph Score, Staatsbibliothek zu BerlinPreussischer Kulturbesitz , Biblioteka Jagiellonska Krakow
(Mus. ms. autogr. W. A. Mozart 366, 367, 489, and 490), 3 vols. (Los Altos, Calif., 2006). This further
includes facsimiles of the two editions of the libretto issued in connection with the Munich
premiere.
7 For the chronology of Idomeneo, see most recently Bruce Alan Brown, Musicological Introduction, in Mozart, Idomeneo, K.366, with Ballet, K.367, I, 920. For the singers and their vocal
characteristics, see Mark Everist, The Performers of Idomeneo, in Rushton, W. A. Mozart:
Idomeneo, 4861. In general, Mozart preferred not to write an aria until he knew the singer;
compare the well-known comment in his letter of 28 February 1778, in relation to an earlier aria
written for Anton Raaff, that I like an aria to t a singer as perfectly as a well-made suit of
clothes.

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would be taken by the Munich bass, Giovanni Battista Zonca and it seems that
even after Raaff was decided upon, Mozart waited until Munich to compose his
arias because he wanted to work more closely with him, and to see how his voice
was changing with age.8 The earliest reference to the rst two of the arias associated with Raaff Vedrommi intorno (no. 6) in Act I and Fuor del mar ho un
mar in seno (no. 12a) in Act II comes in Mozarts letter of 15 November,
where he notes that the man is old and would have problems showing off in a
bravura piece such as Fuor del mar (though it is not clear that it had yet been
composed).9 This letter also reveals that changes were being proposed to the
role: the plan to have a second aria or rather a sort of cavatina for Idomeneo at
the end of Act II separating the last two choruses in the last scene was not going
to work for dramatic reasons, and Raaff was asking for an aria toward the end of
Act III (we shall see the consequences, below).10 It also becomes clear from the
letters (and from the paper-types used in the autograph) that much of Act III was
composed ab initio in Munich; indeed, a comment by Leopold (4 January 1781)
suggests that the composer only received the complete libretto of the last act of
the opera by way of Count Seeau (to whom Varesco had sent it) soon after his
arrival there, even if they may have discussed its content before he left Salzburg.11
Mozarts Munich letters have led to Varesco being given a bad press in the
literature on Idomeneo. To be fair to the librettist, he was constrained by his source
on the one hand, and by the Munich plan on the other. That plan may also have
caused him some uncertainty because it reected various conventions common to
Munich opere serie that made them stand apart from the Metastasian stereotype.
These conventions included higher-than-usual proportions of choruses, of instrumental music (some for dances), and of recitativi stromentati, as well as a more
natural approach to each aria in terms of how it might ow from, and into, the
surrounding recitative. Their presence in Idomeneo makes it seem more than a runof-the-mill opera seria, and this coupled with Mozarts evident efforts in Munich
to mould the libretto despite Varescos increasing intransigence has led scholars
8 In Mozarts autograph score for Idomeneo, the rst encounter between Idomeneo and Idamante
in Act I scenes 910 has Idomeneos part written in the bass clef.

9 Remarks by Mozart in his letter of 27 December also suggest that Leopold had not seen either
Vedrommi intorno or Fuor del mar, meaning that they were not composed in Salzburg. In
a later letter to his father (26 May 1781), Mozart said that when he rst arrived in Munich, he
had so many engagements and other commitments that for two weeks (so, until 20 November
1780 or thereabouts) he was unable to put pen to paper, although this had not stopped him
composing in his head. Thus when Mozart noted on 15 November 1780 that he ran through
Raaff s rst aria (Vedrommi intorno) with the singer he could have played it to him on the
keyboard from memory rather than giving him something written down.
10 The term cavatina suggests in the context of opera seria an aria-like text but with only a single
stanza.
11 In the 4 January 1781 letter, Leopold refers to Varesco having sent Act III to you through
Count Seeau. It is not clear how this might relate to Leopolds sending the libretto and the
draft (by the latter, he probably means the plan) to Mozart on 11 November. But Mozarts
comments on Act III in his letters from 13 November on certainly suggest that he had not
thought through many of its detailed issues earlier, and the 13 November letter further implies
that Leopold had yet to read it. Varesco may have sent what he thought would be his nal work
on the libretto directly to Count Seeau in order to effect payment of his fee.

Poetic Structure and Musical Forms in Mozarts Idomeneo

233

to engage in an unusual (though not, in the end, surprising) degree of speculation

concerning the operas powerful drama and penetrating characterization. These
must, so the argument inevitably goes, be due to Mozarts remarkable music: not
for nothing is Idomeneo the earliest of his operas to occupy a place in the mainstream repertory.
Karl Bohmer, the scholar who has produced the most complete account of
Idomeneo to date, would beg to differ, not so much on Varesco, about whom he
typically says very little, as on what makes the opera stand apart from Mozarts
earlier stage works. Given his concern to place Idomeneo in its immediate context,
Bohmer has stern words to say against critics who claim to perceive in the music
Mozarts deep understanding of his characters and their situations, yet fail to
acknowledge, or even to realise, that the composer was dealing, however expertly,
with common musical tropes in and for Munich.12 This reproach is all well and
good, and it plays into the demythicizing of opera, and of Mozart, characteristic
of much recent scholarship; it is also true that such misguided (according to
Bohmer) psychological perceptions can tend to rely more on the wishful thinking
of the critic than on any evidential basis within the score. But while one might
agree with Bohmer on the danger of submitting any operatic character to psychoanalysis musical or otherwise, one can plausibly respond that working within
conventions did not prevent Mozart when composing Idomeneo from exercising
choices that, in turn, might aid interpretation. One could further add, as I intend
to do, that at least some of those choices were inuenced, even encouraged, by
a libretto that now needs to be brought back into the critical frame. In what
follows, I do not seek to offer an apologia for Varesco, but I do suggest that a
careful reading of his text offers a more nuanced view of Idomeneo that also permits
an escape from the impasse of ungrounded critical reection on this work in particular, and perhaps even on opera in general.
Aria forms
Mozart handles the beginning and ending of Ilias rst aria, Padre, germani,
addio! very carefully indeed. Instead of a formal orchestral introduction, he has the
strings complete the cadence of the prior recitative while exploiting the supremely
economical gesture of introducing just two bassoons to suggest that something
new is about to happen: the upper strings move to off-beat patterns, thereby bringing a new metre ( 24 ) into focus, and the voice comes in almost immediately. Likewise, Mozart omits any nal orchestral ritornello given that this is not an exit-aria
12 Karl Bohmer, W. A. Mozarts Idomeneo und die Tradition der Karnevalsopern in Munchen
(Tutzing, 1999), 23940. For opera in Munich, see also Mozarts Idomeneo und die Musik in
Munchen zur Zeit Karl Theodors: Bericht uber das Symposion der Gesellschaft fur Bayerische Musikgeschichte
und der Musikhistorischen Kommission der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Munchen, 7.9. Juli
1999, ed. Theodor Gollner and Stephan Horner (Munich, 2001); and for its immediate predecessors, see Paul Corneilson, Opera at Mannheim, 17701788, Ph.D. diss. (University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1992). Bohmers primary target is the remarks on Idomeneo in
Paolo Gallarati, La forza della parole: Mozart drammaturgo (Turin, 1993), although there are plenty
of other examples.

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Tim Carter

(Ilia stays on stage for the next scene) and even preempts the audiences tendency
to applaud by way of an offbeat forte chord. As many have noted, this concern
for elided continuities is often apparent in Idomeneo, whether at the level of the
recitativearia complex or in terms of the quite extended musical sequences that
drive the action forward without a break:13 all the arias at least in Act I begin quite
abruptly. The technique is familiar from other operas of the third quarter of the
eighteenth century by the likes of Ignaz Holzbauer, Niccolo` Jommelli, Niccolo`
Piccinni, and Tommaso Traetta, who sought to modify the stricter musical differentiations of late Baroque opera seria in the interest of a more owing presentation
of the drama. The trend is also apparent even in Mozarts Lucio Silla (Milan, 1772),
to a libretto by Giovanni de Gamerra, while Idomeneos immediate predecessor in
Munich, Paul Gruas Telemaco (the Carnival opera in 1780), exhibits a similar concern
for musical continuities.14
These operas also explored new formal patterns for arias.15 As we have seen,
the text of Padre, germani, addio! is in the standard two-stanza format that was
the norm for arias from the last quarter of the seventeenth century on. This
allowed for the typical da capo (or dal segno) treatment, whereby the rst and second
stanzas are set to two discrete musical sections, with the rst then repeated from
its beginning (da capo) or at some point thereafter (dal segno; for example, from the
rst entry of the voice, cutting the opening orchestral ritornello); the ABA model is
clear in Table 1.1a. Moreover, the A section normally runs through stanza 1 twice
(plus additional internal repetitions), once modulating from tonic to (in a major key)
dominant, and once modulating from dominant to tonic; these tonal areas are also
stabilised by an initial, middle, and nal instrumental ritornello (not indicated in the
table). This means that ve or more complete stanzas of text are normally presented in a full-blown aria: stanza 1 four times (twice in each A section), and stanza
2 at least once. As in the case of any ternary form with closed sections (for example,
a Minuet and Trio), the complete A section also needs to serve a double function: it
is a musical beginning that must somehow prompt continuation, yet it also serves as
an ending.
The difculty for the librettist is no less apparent: the second stanza needs to
follow logically from the rst, and yet the entire text must be able to end with
13 Daniel Heartz discusses how some of these elisions were second thoughts added later to
the autograph score to replace stronger endings; see his Attacca subito: Lessons from the
Autograph Score of Idomeneo, Acts 1 and 2, in Festschrift Wolfgang Rehm zum 60. Geburtstag, ed.
Dietrich Berke and Harald Heckmann (Kassel, etc., 1989), 8392.
14 Julian Rushton, The Genre of Idomeneo, in Rushton, W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo, 628; Marita
Petzoldt McClymonds, Carl Theodor, the Munich Theatrical Establishment, and the FrancoItalian Synthesis in Opera: The Sertor/Prati Armida abbandonata of 1785, in Gollner and Horner,
Mozarts Idomeneo und die Musik in Munchen zur Zeit Karl Theodors, 14350; Bohmer, W. A. Mozarts
Idomeneo, 1934 (specically on Telemaco). Another model is the opening scene of Gunther von
Schwarzburg; see Corneilson, Opera at Mannheim, 21112.
15 See Marita P. McClymondss entry on Aria, 4: Eighteenth Century, in The New Grove Dictionary
of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 2001); James Webster, Aria as
Drama, in The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera, ed. Anthony R. DelDonna and
Pierpaolo Polzonetti (Cambridge, 2009), 2449. But neither McClymonds nor Webster explores
the textual consequences in ways suggested here.

Poetic Structure and Musical Forms in Mozarts Idomeneo

235

Table 1: Three Aria Forms

1a Ternary (da
section:
stanza:
key (if major):

capo or dal segno)

A
B
1
1
2
IV VI x

(A da capo)
(1
1)
(IV VI)

1b Compound-ternary
section:
A
stanza:
1
1
key (if major): I
V

B
2
x

A
1
I

2 Compound-binary
section:
A
B
stanza:
1
2
key (if major): I
V

A
1
I

B
2
V

1
I

the rst. Matters are straightforward if the main poetic idea in stanza 2 complements the one in stanza 1, with which one can therefore end easily; they are far
less so if, as sometimes happens, stanza 2 shifts to a very different perspective.
In such situations, the aria can plausibly return to, and end with, stanza 1 only by
negating the sentiment expressed in stanza 2 or by some manner of ironic reinterpretation. While performance elements (ornamentation, inection, gesture) might
enable such reinterpretation, there is scant room for manoeuvre within the music
itself. What is impossible within the two-stanza da capo format, however, is some
notion of rhetorical argument and/or dramatic progression that works through
both stanzas to, and only to, the end of the text.
The problem is well known in studies of Baroque da capo arias, but contemporary librettists had various tricks to get round it. An aria from Metastasios Achille
in Sciro is as good an example as (m)any of one of them: this libretto was rst set
by Antonio Caldara in 1736 and then at least another 26 times up to 1828, including the opera by Pietro Pompeo Sales staged in Munich in 1774, and we shall
see its partial relevance to Idomeneo below. Achille has spent the opera pursuing
Deidamia until her father, Licomede, nally accepts him as a son-in-law:
Or che mio glio sei,
sdo il destin nemico;
sento degli anni miei
il peso alleggerir.

Now that you are my son,

I defy inimical destiny;
I feel of my years
the weight grow light.

Cos` chi a tronco antico

orido ramo innesta,
nella natia foresta
lo vede rinorir.

Just as he who to an old tree trunk

grafts a leafy branch,
in the nascent forest
sees it sprout anew.

In such cases where stanza 1 makes a personal statement (Licomede no longer

feels his age . . .) and stanza 2 develops a less personal simile (. . . just as an old
tree can sprout new leaves), ending with stanza 1 makes perfect sense, and even
is preferable within any kind of dramatic situation: the statement provides the
excuse for the simile which, in turn, feeds the statement. The same applies to
another typical Metastasian device: having stanza 2 deliver some kind of maxim.
Drawing a generic lesson from a specic situation is all well and good, though it

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Tim Carter

turns opera into a series of ex cathedra pronouncements that, while suiting some
didactic purpose, can run contrary to any dramatic ow such as it might be.
By the early 1770s (and probably earlier in opera buffa), however, composers
were starting to develop alternative ways of handling the two-stanza text, including running through both stanzas twice one after the other (hence ABAB) with
or without additional internal repetitions so that the ends of the text and of the
music coincide (see Table 1.2). This structure was in principle shorter than the old
da capo format: the two stanzas are presented as four rather than ve or more. Nor
would it make much sense for the typical Metastasian pattern (or at least, one
of them) illustrated by Or che mio glio sei, designed to end with stanza 1: as a
result, two-stanza texts needed to adopt new rhetorical tactics (we shall see how).
In terms of the music, this ABAB form merged with the most common strategy
of eighteenth-century tonal grammar, whereby the A section starts in the tonic,
modulates to a related key by or in the B section, returns to the tonic by or in
the second A section, and ends in the tonic with the second B section transposed:
that related key will depend on whether the key of the aria is major (usually
moving to the dominant) or minor (usually to the relative major). This is often
termed a compound-binary form: it approaches so-called sonata form (although
the term is problematic both in itself and as applied to operatic numbers) to the
extent that the tonal areas for stanzas 1 and 2 are strongly articulated, and depending
on how the return to the tonic (for, or in, stanza 1 the second time around) is
handled. The fact that the second B section necessarily involves some rewriting of
the music of the rst B section to t the new key also allows for a different perspective on its content. In these terms, the dramatic potential for any (re-)reading
of stanza 2 is clear.
A similar tonal strategy was also starting to operate in ternary-form arias based
on older da capo or dal segno structures (ending with stanza 1): in the A section rst
time round, the rst statement of stanza 1 would be in the tonic and (in a major
key) the second statement in the dominant; the B section (stanza 2) would be in a
contrasting key and/or somehow modulatory; and the A section second time
round would have both statements of stanza 1 in the tonic, forcing transposition
and reworking of its second half (see Table 1.1b). Again, the comparison with
sonata form is clear (stanza 2 acts as the development section) although it is
not always, if at all, appropriate. But given the similar tonal articulation, scholars
have sometimes conated these two aria forms the compound-binary ABAB
and the compound-ternary ABA. In terms of their disposition of the text, however, they are quite different: the binary model ends with the second stanza, and
the ternary one with the rst.
In response to all these developments, librettists were also starting to develop
even more uid approaches to aria texts therefore prompting other musical
strategies using irregular structures sometimes in mixed metres: the libretto of
Lucio Silla provides some good examples.16 From that point of view, Varesco was
16 Compare Sillas Dogni pieta` mi scoglio (Act II scene 8; no. 13) and Giunias Parto, maffretto
(Act II scene 10; no. 16); there are also other examples here.

Poetic Structure and Musical Forms in Mozarts Idomeneo

237

Table 2: Two-Stanza Aria Forms in Idomeneo*

Compound-binary (ABAB, ending with stanza 2)
Act I

Compound-ternary (ABA, ending with stanza 1)

Ilia: Padre, germani, addio! (no. 1; settenari )

Idamante: Non ho colpa, e mi condanni
(no. 2; ottonari)
Elettra: Tutte nel cor vi sento (no. 4; settenari )
Idamante: Il padre adorato (no. 7; senari )
Arbace: Se il tuo duol, se il mio disio (no. 10a;
ottonari )

Act II
Ilia: Se il padre perdei (no. 11; senari)

Idomeneo: Fuor del mar ho un mar in seno (no.

12a; ottonari )
Elettra: Idol mio! se ritroso (no. 13; ottonari and
quaternari )
Ilia: Zefretti lusinghieri (no. 19; ottonari)
Arbace: Se cola` ne fati e` scritto (no. 22; ottonari )

Act III

Idamante: No, la morte io non pavento (no. 27a;

ottonari )
Elettra, DOreste, dAjace (no. 29a; senari )
Idomeneo: Torna la pace al core (no. 30a; settenari)
* Idomeneos Vedrommi intorno (no. 6) has three stanzas (set 1, 2, 3), with a change of poetic meter for the third
(from quinari to quaternari ending with an ottonario tronco), which Mozart treats as a stretta.

certainly more conservative in Idomeneo: all but one of its fourteen arias have texts
in two stanzas in what would seem to be the Metastasian mould. Of those
thirteen, seven are set in some kind of binary form (ending with stanza 2) and
six in some kind of ternary (ending with stanza 1); see Table 2. This is a far higher
proportion of binary arias than we nd in Mozarts handling of the two-stanza
texts in his later opera seria, La clemenza di Tito (Prague, 1791). As for Idomeneo, the
presence of these two musical forms has often been noted, though not always
explained. What has not been fully considered, however, is the extent to which it
was enabled or at least, not disabled by Varescos aria texts, and therefore by
how Mozart chose to respond to them.17
It is striking that binary arias predominate in Acts I and II, whereas Act III
favours ternary ones. Save that the ternary arias beginning Acts II and III (nos. 10a,
19) might be viewed as conventional act-openers, there is no obvious reason for the
binary/ternary distinction in terms of an arias function in the drama: for example,
as an exit-aria or as a soliloquy. It is true, however, that the ternary arias appear to
17 For example, Nicole Baker, The Relationship between Aria Forms in Mozarts Idomeneo and
Reform Operas in Mannheim, in Gollner and Horner, Mozarts Idomeneo und die Musik in
Munchen zur Zeit Karl Theodors, 13141, argues that Varescos texts could just as easily have
been set as Da Capo arias as progressive binary forms (ibid., 140). Julian Rushton carefully
distinguishes the aria forms in Idomeneo; see his General Structure of Idomeneo, in Rushton,
W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo, 95105; however, he, too, sets less store by their immediate textual
derivations, while nevertheless exhibiting a typical sensitivity to their dramatic implications. The
most complete account of the arias in Idomeneo, in Bohmer, W. A. Mozarts Idomeneo, 23784
(plus the discussion of aria forms used in Munich operas in general on pp. 11622), makes no
reference whatsoever to the textual issues.

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act more as static interpolations rather than contributing to plot development

such that one can do without them: Mozart removed a number in his late cuts to
Idomeneo prior to the Munich premiere (and then in his 1786 revision of the opera
for performance in Vienna). This impression is strengthened by the rather formulaic
eight-syllable lines of most of their texts on the one hand, and on the other, by the
less taut tonal design of the ternary form (with its digression in the section setting
stanza 2). Of course, all this might seem merely to concern the composers craft,
and not something of any great critical import. But moments when a composer
must make choices are always interesting both in themselves and for their consequences. How Mozart should, could, and did treat his texts are three quite different
questions, and it is worth trying to explore some possible responses to them.
Ternary or binary?
Thus one can reasonably speculate on what, if anything, would have prompted
Mozart to prefer one form over another in setting a given aria text. One set of
issues might concern characterization. For example, there seems to be a pattern,
at least in Acts I and II (we shall see why Act III might be different), of distinguishing ternary arias for the older characters Idomeneo and his faithful retainer
Arbace, who sing in what now appears to be an old-fashioned da capo vein from
binary arias given to the younger ones who are more directly affected by the dramatic action (Ilia, Idamante, Elettra). This may in addition be due to Mozarts
perceptions of the singers who took those senior roles: Anton Raaff (Idomeneo)
was well into his sixties, while Domenico Panzacchi (Arbace) was a worthy old
fellow, so the composer wrote on 5 December 1780 (though Panzacchi was
born in 1733, only three years before Dorothea Wendling). The texts of these
arias for Idomeneo and Arbace also seem fairly conventional even the threestanza one for Idomeneos Vedrommi intorno (no. 6) produced something that
Mozart said (on 27 December) was commonplace and designed for ternary
treatment.
For example, Arbaces Se il tuo duol, se il mio disio (no. 10a) follows the
Metastasian pattern:
Se il tuo duol, se il mio disio
sen volassero del pari,
a ubbidirti qual son io,
saria il duol pronto a` fuggir.

If your grief, if my desire

move together as equals,
then to obey you, just as I do,
should grief be ready to ee.

Quali al trono sian compagni,

chi lambisce or veda, e impari:
Stia lontan, o` non si lagni,
se non trova che martir.

Thus it is for those who sit on the throne:

anyone who desires it, now watch and learn
stay away, or do not complain
if one nds only suffering there.

Stanza 1 is consequent upon Idomeneo having ordered Arbace to arrange for

Idamante to leave Crete with Elettra so as to save the prince from his fathers
vow: thus Arbace hopes that the kings grief will disappear as readily as he is
willing to obey his master. Stanza 2 is both more abstract and more general: let

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anyone wishing to ascend a throne learn from Idomeneos example either to stay
away from it, or not to complain when suffering is the result. While so sententious
a moral was not unusual at least in earlier opera seria, it is hardly relevant to the
immediate matters at hand: Idomeneos commission, Arbaces eagerness to carry
it out, and whether the kings grief will indeed be assuaged. Therefore, it makes
sense to end with stanza 1. Similar reasons support the ternary reading of Idomeneos
Fuor del mar ho un mar nel seno (no. 12a): the rst stanza describes the storm
within the kings breast, with Neptunes wrath looming over him, while the second
addresses the proud god (Fiero Nume!) and asks in a rather inelegant, roundabout way how Idomeneos heart might avoid foundering on the rocks. In the
case of such texts moving from the personal and/or specic to the general and/or
abstract rather as with the Metastasio aria text noted earlier the tendency would
be to use ternary form, also helping to keep the focus on the main drama.
The personal can often be identied by a rst-person pronoun or verb positioned in one place rather than another: Arbaces io in the third line of Se il tuo
duol, se il mio disio is a straightforward example.18 Thus although Ilia is associated with binary arias in Acts I and II, her Zefretti lusinghieri (no. 19) at the
beginning of Act III seems to work differently:
Zefretti lusinghieri,
deh volate al mio tesoro,
e gli dite chio ladoro,
che mi serbi il cor fedel.

Gentle zephyrs,
oh y to my beloved,
and tell him I adore him,
and to keep his heart true to me.

E voi piante, e or sinceri,

che ora inafa il pianto amaro,
dite a lui che amor piu` raro
mai vedeste sotto il ciel.

And you, plants and tender owers,

which these bitter tears now water,
tell him that no rarer love
have you ever seen beneath the sky.

In stanza 1, Ilia hopes that the gentle breezes will ask her adored Idamante to
keep his heart true to her; in stanza 2, she begs the plants and owers to tell him
of so great a love. This is not high drama, and both stanzas say more or less the
same thing, so Mozart could end the aria with either one. The difference, and
it may be the deciding factor, is that the rst, but not the second, ends with the
personal pronouns io and mi: given that Ilia is talking more about herself, it
makes more sense to end the aria at that point.19
Two-stanza arias in which each stanza ends with an equally personal statement
(a rst-person pronoun or verb in their nal lines) such as Idamantes Non ho
18 The issue relates to what one might call I-arias, which are, for obvious reasons, the most
common in the repertory. Any fuller discussion of the rhetoric of aria texts would also need to
consider You-arias and IYou ones (Arbaces is in fact an example of the latter), which also
raise tricky questions about who hears what on the operatic stage. Of course, third-person arias
(where a character sings about someone or something else) are also common.
19 Clearly I disagree with Rushton (General Structure of Idomeneo, 101), who claims that in the
case of this aria, nothing in the form of the poetry . . . prevented Mozart from using binary
form. However, he is right, I think, that This expansive three-section design is suited to a
peaceful soliloquy, and Mozart presumably wanted the mood of the rst quatrain to precede
Idamantes unexpected entry (loc. cit.).

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colpa, e mi condanni (no. 2), Ilias Se il padre perdei (no. 11) and Elettras
DOreste, dAjace (no. 29a) could of course go either way, at least by this
criterion, so other issues come into play (we shall see some of them below). Nor
is any singular location of personal pronouns an infallible method for determining
formal paradigms: in Fuor del mar, Idomeneo refers to il mio cor in stanza 2,
but the aria ends with stanza 1 as he asserts his sense of being under Neptunes
constant threat. Yet viewing texts in this way does prompt further questions when
expectations seem not to be met. For example, Elettras Idol mio! se ritroso
(no. 13) as she contemplates leaving Crete with Idamante has a rst stanza
ending with a pronoun and the second not. Moreover, the second stanza ends
with a maxim. Yet Mozarts setting in binary form seems encouraged because
her argument continues through both stanzas:
Idol mio! se ritroso
altra amante a` me ti rende,
non moffende
rigoroso,
piu` malletta austero amor.

My beloved! If
another lover [i.e., Ilia] makes you resistant to me,
this does not offend me,
unyielding one,
for a sober love attracts me more.

Scacciera` vicino ardore

dal tuo sen lardor lontano:
piu` la mano
puo` damore,
se` vicin lamante cor.

A nearby passion will chase

a distant passion from your breast:
more the hand
of Love can do.
if the loving heart is nearby.

Here the text mixing eight- and four-syllable lines moves from the personal
(Elettra is not fazed by Idamantes love for Ilia) to the general (love close at
hand is stronger than at a distance). But contrary to Arbaces Se il tuo duol, se il
mio disio, this general point has a more direct bearing on Elettras aspirations:
that she will eventually succeed in wooing Idamante. Thus the binary setting,
coupled with the reprise of stanza 2 in the tonic, allows Elettra to work harder
to persuade herself of the likelihood of that outcome.
Bohmer would of course resist such reasoning as mere psychobabble, and one
should not fall into the trap of granting agency to operatic characters, who have
no say in how they are represented by their creators. There is also an obvious
danger of circularity in this kind of speculation: Mozarts choices must always be
shown to be the right ones or at least, better than the alternatives because he
is, well, Mozart. And it is true that a ternary-form setting of Idol mio! se ritroso
would not be implausible: stanza 1 does not contradict stanza 2, so the aria could
end with it. My point, however, is that doing so would take our perception of the
character and her situation in a different direction: should we be encouraged to
focus on Elettras claim that she is happy with a sober love, or on her attempt
to prove the reverse adage, as it were, that closeness makes the heart grow
fonder? The music directs us to the latter. Thus Mozart has made not just a
musical choice in setting Idol mio! se ritroso in one way rather than another,
but also a dramatic one, or at least, one with dramatic consequences.

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This might seem to be a borderline case. But elsewhere in Idomeneo, the consequences of choosing one form over the other are starker. In the case of Ilias
Padre, germani, addio! we have seen that the prior recitative builds to the climax
of her being torn by vendetta, gelosia, odio, ed amore. For the aria, the issue
for Mozart is whether to end with stanza 1 (Grecia, cagion tu sei. / E un greco
adorero`?) or stanza 2 (ma quel sembiante, oh Dei! / odiare ancor non so). What
is more important to his, and our, reading of the character Ilias self-disgust at
loving a Greek, or the fact that she cannot nd it within herself to hate Idamante?
Should she end with a question or with some version of its answer? The outcome
is clear: Ilias main concern is her feelings for the prince, and that concern
becomes all the more painful (or resigned? the performer can choose) as it is
recapitulated in G minor rather than its original B-at major.
Elettras rst aria, Tutte nel cor vi sento prompts similar inquiry:
Tutte nel cor vi sento
furie del crudo Averno,
lunge a` s` gran tormento
amor, merce`, pieta`.

In my heart I feel you all,

furies of cruel Avernus;
far from such great torment
[be] love, mercy, pity.

Chi mi rubo` quel core,

quel che tradito ha` il mio,
provin dal mio furore
vendetta, e crudelta`.

She who stole that heart,

he who betrayed mine,
shall experience from my fury
vengeance and cruelty.

Here Mozart must decide whether the main point is (stanza 1) the displacing of
love, mercy, and pity in Elettras heart, or (stanza 2) her threat that she (Ilia)
who has stolen her lover, and he (Idamante) who has betrayed her love, will face
her fury (mio furore; note the personal pronoun) and her need for vengeance
and cruelty.
Ilias problem is that she cannot hate Idamante, and Elettras, as it were, that
she is dominated by rage. Both these arias come down rmly on the side of a
binary form that Mozarts treatment accentuates still further by placing even
greater emphasis on stanza 2 than the form itself requires: it is heard twice complete in each B section, also with additional repetitions of the nal line.20 In Tutte
nel cor vi sento, the return of the rst stanza is weakened still more or its
representation of emotional instability strengthened by an irregular recapitulation in C minor rather than D minor. But the important point, again, is that in
each of these cases, ending the aria with the rst stanza in a ternary form would
20 Wilhelm Seidel comments on Padre, germani, addio! that the second subject strongly answers
in the afrmative the question posed in the bridge passage (Es ist deutlich: Der Seitensatz ist ein
berleitungssatz gestellt hat); see his Ilia und Ilione:
einziges, groes Ja auf die Frage, die der U
ber Mozarts Idomeneo und Campras Idomenee, in Studien zur Musikgeschichte: Eine Festschrift fur
U
Ludwig Finscher, ed. Annegrit Laubenthal (Kassel, etc., 1995), 339. As his terminology suggests,
Seidels argument is based upon notions of sonata form rather than on the textual choices and
manipulations that may have led Mozart to it; he claims that the most one can say of the words is
that they do not contradict the music (ibid., 340: Von der Worten kann man nur sagen, da sie
der Musik nicht widersprechen).

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produce a different reading of the character a more outraged Ilia, and an Elettra
with at least the potential for amor, merce`, pieta` also with different consequences
for the rest of the opera. Some critics may feel that Ilia and Elettra are fairly monochromatic characters in Idomeneo,21 but Mozarts colouring of them one way rather
than another (or rather than multiple others) is a direct result of his handling of
their texts. Moreover, this handling, in turn, at least reects the potentials of those
texts as created by Varesco.
It is not surprising to nd Mozart forging close correlations between an arias
poetic content and its musical character (key, tempo, melodic style, orchestral
writing, etc.). It is more so to extend the texts inuence to his decisions on, and
handling of, musical form as one can suggest with all the arias in Idomeneo along
the lines initiated above given that it allocates a greater role than usual to the
poetry in terms of enabling possible formal outcomes, if not of determining
them. The matter would hardly deserve comment were we dealing primarily with
texts leading to ABA settings: here Varesco, an inexperienced librettist, would
simply be exploiting da capo aria stereotypes in a manner familiar to anyone knowing Metastasio. It would also be convenient for our view of Mozart the dramatist
if he were somehow improving upon a staid libretto by adopting musical forms
that are progressive (in both the dramatic sense and the historical one). However,
the comparison with La clemenza di Tito is again quite striking, even taking into
account Caterino Mazzola`s revisions to Metastasios original libretto adopted for
that opera: there the aria texts are more clear-cut, and Mozart simplies the
ternary forms still more (often with the A section just in the tonic and the B
section in the dominant). In the case of Idomeneo, the fact that the poetry itself of
both Padre, germani, addio! and Tutte nel cor vi sento, and even of Idol mio!
se ritroso, at the very least encourages an ABAB setting strongly suggests that
Varesco was somehow made aware of that less common (for a poet) binary
possibility, and that he designed, or revised, his verse accordingly. In other words,
one might plausibly suggest that Mozarts choice of musical form was a result of
decisions made by, or in conjunction with, his librettist, and that at least in some
cases in Idomeneo, they were working together on such structural matters and their
dramatic consequences.
Danchets original libretto was no help when it came to these and other arias in
Idomeneo: the French tragedie en musique worked in very different ways. Nor do we
know what other librettos Varesco might have read to prepare for Idomeneo. It is
clear, however, that the three arias just mentioned were composed in Salzburg:
Mozart already knew the Wendlings voices from his earlier visits to Mannheim.22
21 Compare Julian Rushtons discussion of the Elettra problem in Idomeneo in his Conclusions in
Rushton, W. A. Mozart: Idomeneo, 156 also citing the discussion in Joseph Kerman, Opera as
Drama, 2nd edn (Berkeley, 1988), 8085 even if this problem is in part due to Varescos
weakening of the character compared with Danchet.
22 Mozart wrote to his father on 8 November 1780 that Dorothea Wendling was arcicontentissima with her scene (Act I scene 1, one assumes), and on the 15th, that Elisabeth Wendling
had sung two arias (which must be those in Acts I and II) half a dozen times to her great
delight. They cannot have been composed in Munich.

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243

Thus no record survives of the discussions with Varesco that led to their creation,
nor of whether their form as much as their content was on any agenda. One question that now follows for Idomeneo, however, is what might have happened once
such discussions were no longer possible after Mozart left Salzburg for Munich
on 5 November 1780.
Issues in Act III
The apparent shift in favour of ternary arias as Idomeneo progresses through Act II
to Act III makes the latter part of the opera appear more conventional than the
former. Bohmer attributes this to Mozarts relative freedom when working on the
earlier portions of the opera in Salzburg (albeit according to the Munich plan)
compared with his being on site, where greater constraints were placed upon the
composer by his being in direct contact with his singers and with those in charge
of the production, by the more immediate pressures of impending performance,
and even by the weight of the conventions themselves.23 Another factor to bring
into the equation is that the later parts of Idomeneo are where deviations from
Danchets Idomenee were most needed (to create a lieto ne), leaving the opera
more to its own devices. It seems clear, however, that further problems were
raised by the fact that Varesco was now working on his own.
Mozarts Munich letters are lled with his requests for adjustments to the
libretto in matters that had turned out to be problematic now that the composer
was in direct contact with those involved in staging the opera. The rst difculty
for him was that once he was in Munich, negotiations with Varesco became much
more cumbersome given that problems that might have been solved around a
table now needed explanation and justication in writing. The second was that
Leopold Mozart tended to lter his sons written requests for revisions for fear
of offending a librettist who eventually became heartily tired of the whole business. As a result, compromises and accommodations that might otherwise have
been achieved were sacriced for the sake of expediency.
Many of these adjustments concerned matters of staging and pacing predetermined by the plan for the opera that had been agreed with Munich the previous
summer: now that the production team and cast were assembled, various kinks
needed to be ironed out and personal requests from the singers accommodated in
particular, we shall see, from Anton Raaff. Thus although Varesco needed to cut or
add text which caused further annoyance given the need to prepare a nal copy of
the libretto for the printer we do not have much evidence of him having to devise
or revise words to suit Mozarts musical purposes in ways that, I have argued above,
probably occurred in Salzburg even if (inevitably) we have no record of it. Two
exceptions, however, are revealing, one of which is the celebrated case of Idomeneos
last aria (discussed further, below). The other is Ilias Se il padre perdei / la patria, il
riposo (no. 11) in Act II. In his rst letter back to Salzburg (8 November), Mozart
told his father of the new agreement to include in this aria obbligato parts for ute,
23 Bohmer, W. A. Mozarts Idomeneo, 283.

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oboe, bassoon, and horn, which means that he had not yet begun to set the text to
music. But only then had he started to look closely at the words, even though he
must have seen them in Salzburg, and he now found a problem. The beginning
(which Mozart styles Se il padre perdei [/] in te lo ritrovo) could not be better:
for the poem is charming and, as it is absolutely natural and owing, I can go on
composing quite easily. But then came an aside that Mozart felt would not make
sense in terms of the text repetition required in an aria, so he wanted his father to
ask Varesco to revise it (I would prefer an uninterrupted aria). It is signicant that
in this case, at least, Mozart seems only to have engaged fully with a text when he
started to consider the music in concrete rather than more abstract terms. Varesco
quickly produced a revision: Leopold sent it on 11 November, and Mozart acknowledged it on the 15th.
Not everything was so straightforward, however. A good number of the adjustments proposed in Munich concerned Act III, in part (again) because of the staging and pacing, but also because of Raaff. Varesco certainly wrote the libretto of
this act according to the plan, but as we have seen, Mozart may not have been
able to read it until after his arrival in Munich, and even if he had, he would not
have considered it in any musical detail prior to starting composition on it, at least
to judge by the case of Se il padre perdei. Moreover, the aria texts in Act III
seem to lose focus both in terms of their content and of their structural implications, meaning that Mozarts formal choices appear to hinge still more on his own
dramatic interpretation: while they are not prohibited by the libretto, nor are they
always prompted by it. The text of Ilias Zefretti lusinghieri seems constructed
for ternary form (see above), which Mozart follows. But Arbaces Se cola` ne fati
e` scritto (no. 22) appears binary: in stanza 1, Arbace hopes that even if Crete
must pay the price for Idomeneos incaution, the prince and king might be saved,
while (stanza 2) he is willing to lay down his own life so long as the kingdom
might gain mercy. Quite apart from the tendency noted above to give Arbace (or
Panzacchi) da capo-like forms, Mozart seems to have decided to end with stanza 1
so as not to place too much emphasis on an offer of self-sacrice that is of
far less dramatic importance than Idamantes and then Ilias later in the act.
Idamantes No, la morte io non pavento stays with the personal for stanza 2
(so, binary), but that stanza concerns his going happily to the Elysian Fields if his
beloved Ilia will have life and peace, whereas in stanza 1, Idamante makes the
more vigorous claim that he does not fear death if it will bring peace and serenity
to his land and to his father. Mozart opts to end with this properly lial, and
therefore more appropriate, statement, accentuating it by setting stanza 2 in a
slower tempo (Larghetto, followed by a return to Allegro). As for the text of
Elettras DOreste, dAjace it could go either way, we have seen: Mozarts choice
of binary form the only such aria in the act makes it seem even more the
over-the-top mad-scene, which is probably how it is best interpreted.
The charitable view is that Varesco was leaving options open for Mozart;
another is that without knowing the composers intentions, he was confused. But
in the case of Act III, Mozart seems to have had no grounds for complaint thus
far: he was able to work with what he was given. Matters became more compli-

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cated, however, as the production team started to identify defects in the plan for
the end of the opera. Idamante has an aria to mark his submission to the High
Priests sacricial knife (No, la morte io non pavento) but Ilia does not, although
the plan called for a duet between them arguing over who should die: Mozart
noted on 13 November that it would be cut.24 Instead, an oracle abruptly intervenes to pronounce Idomeneos conditional reprieve from his vow (Ha vinto
amore, a Idomeneo perdona): the gods have been appeased by Idamantes and
Ilias willingness to be sacriced, and they will allow them to live happily ever
after so long as Idomeneo abdicates, leaving the throne to Idamante. Elettras
hopes to marry Idamante are nally dashed, and she vents her fury (in the aria
DOreste, dAjace) before ying off in a passion (parte infuriata, according to
the stage direction in the libretto). Idomeneo then announces his acceptance of
the gods terms in a recitative (Popoli! a voi lultima legge impone).
In the plan, so Mozart recounted in his letter of 15 November, this recitative
was be followed by a quartet, presumably for the main characters left on stage:
Ilia, Idamante, Idomeneo, and Arbace.25 But Raaff decided that he wanted a
pretty aria instead of the quartet because the opera did not yet give him sufcient
music capable of displaying his cantabile singing. Mozart was inclined to accommodate
him, in part because the old singer would not be shown to advantage in the virtuoso
showpiece Fuor del mar ho un mar nel seno, and also (so the letter goes on to say)
because Idomeneo was about to lose an aria (or cavatina) from the end of Act II.
However, Mozart also felt that dropping the quartet was a good dramatic move
(Thus too a useless piece will be got rid of and Act III will be far more effective)
in ways similar to the removal of the second Idamante/Ilia duet that he had noted
two days before.
Despite the logic, this new aria cantabile for Idomeneo would prove to be the
most bothersome of the Idomeneo revisions.26 It would also stretch the binary/
ternary paradigms to their limits, and perhaps even beyond. Here Varesco was
truly on his own, and coming to the end of his tether: he reverted still more to
the Metastasian stereotype. Leopold sent his rst version of the new aria on 25
November: we know only its rst two lines (in seven-syllable lines) as quoted by
Leopold Il cor languiva ed era / gelida massa in petto (My heart was languishing, and was / a cold weight in my breast). But Leopold was worried about the
hanging ed era at the end of the rst line, forcing an awkward enjambment, and
Mozart agreed on 29 November, also expressing further concerns about the text
24 The second duet is to be omitted altogether and indeed with more prot than loss to the
opera. For, when you read through the scene, you will see that it obviously becomes limp and
cold by the addition of an aria or a duet, and very genant for the other actors who must stand by
doing nothing; and, besides, the noble struggle between Ilia and Idamante would be too long
and thus lose its whole force. This second duet would also have come too soon after the rst
in Act III scene 2: Ilia and Idamantes Sio non moro a questi accenti (no. 20).
25 It is not clear, however, how such a quartet could have squared with the earlier one in Act III,
Andro` ramingo e solo (no. 21), for Ilia, Elettra, Idamante, and Idomeneo.
26 For a fuller discussion on which I rely, see Daniel Heartz, Raaff s Last Aria: A Mozartian Idyll
in the Spirit of Hasse, Musical Quarterly 60 (1974), 51743. However, Heartz does not discuss all
the textual issues that I seek to raise.

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and requesting something peaceful and contented instead. He cited as an example

of what he wanted an aria from Metastasios Achille in Sciro, Or che mio glio sei
(the one discussed above), or at least its rst stanza, which he quoted. Mozart
repeated the request on his and Raaff s behalf on 1 and 5 December, reiterating
his preference for just a single stanza: as he wrote on 1 December, Even if it has
only one part so much the better; in every aria the second part must always be
kept for the middle section and often indeed it gets in my way. Clearly he wanted
a smaller-scale cavatina in contrast to the ternary arias prevalent thus far in Act III
and replacing the one Idomeneo lost at the end of Act II whether for dramatic
reasons or because the act was already running long.
On 11 December, Leopold sent Varescos second text for the aria, again in
seven-syllable lines. Sazio e` il destino al ne still had two stanzas: in the rst,
Idomeneo feels his spirit reinvigorated now that Fate is satised, and the second
presents the rather extravagant simile of a snake rejuvenating itself by shedding
its skin (so, implying a ternary-form setting). On 27 December, Mozart reported
his and Raaff s concerns over this text, in part because of its awkward vowels
Leopold disagreed (29 December), chiey, one suspects, because he did not want
to have go back to Varesco yet again (although eventually he did) and on the
30th, Mozart noted Raaff s suggestion of secretly inserting another setting of
Metastasio, this time Bellalme al ciel dilette from Il natal di Giove (rst set by
Giuseppe Bonno in 1740, although Raaff may have recalled Johann Adolf Hasses
setting of 1749); it is a conventional celebration of a lieto ne with a reference to
Cretan celebrations in its second stanza. On 4 January 1781, however, Leopold
sent a third text by Varesco, also recounting the librettists furious reaction to
the request for it: he had complained angrily, had noted that his authors fee was
too low to warrant him having had to make so many alterations, and had insisted
that the last text he had sent (Sazio e` il destino al ne) was perfectly acceptable
and should be included in the printed libretto (as it was).
This third text (no. 30a) once more in seven-syllable lines still had its problems:
Torna la pace al core,
torna lo spento ardore,
orisce in me leta`.

Peace returns to my heart,

the lost ardour returns,
the age ourishes in me.

Tal la stagion di Flora

lalbero annoso inora,
novo vigor gli da`.

Thus does Floras season

bring owers to the age-old tree,
and gives it new vigour.

The model remains Metastasian a personal statement in stanza 1 and a more

general comparison in stanza 2 and Spring (Floras season) offers a better simile
than sloughing snakes: it also harks back to the leafy boughs of Metastasios Or
che mio glio sei. But it is compressed to the point of difdence, the short threeline stanzas suggesting Varescos exasperation with the whole business.
Mozart seems to have become reconciled to the idea of a two-stanza aria in
ternary form (he had already quoted both stanzas of Bellalme al ciel dilette on
30 December), or at least, he realised that there was no point (both with his father

Poetic Structure and Musical Forms in Mozarts Idomeneo

247

and with Varesco) trying for something better. Time was also getting very short in
terms of Mozarts needing to nish his score. But he was unusually uncertain
about how to set the second stanza of Torna la pace al core, starting it as a continuation of the music of the rst (although he was already well into the dominant
in the second statement of the stanza 1) and then switching course after four
measures, opting instead for a middle section in contrasting metre and tempo.
Although this type of contrast is not uncommon in an aria cantabile,27 one rarely
nds Mozart changing his mind in mid-composition, especially given his wellknown tendency to have everything clear in his head before putting it on paper.28
What is even odder, however, is the wholly premature reprise of stanza 1 within
that middle section, where it simply does not belong, at least within any normal
parameters of the ABA form.
Mozart had a far easier time with Titos last aria in La clemenza di Tito, Se
allimpero, amici dei, which despite its musical and even dramatic similarities to
Torna la pace al core is much more straightforward. Part of the problem may
have been Varescos three-line stanzas: longer ones were better in terms of producing balanced phrase-structures. The irregularity also affected Mozarts treatment of the text at the end of the A section. The rst time round, this section
has the conventional two statements of stanza 1 complete, but it then returns to
the rst two lines, and further repeats the rst changed to a verso tronco so as to
end torna la pace al core, torna lo spento ardore, torna la pace al core, la pace al
cor, la pace al cor. Mozarts initial draft of the end of the second A section went
the same way (though the music is now in the tonic rather than the dominant),
but he changed his mind over torna lo spento ardo-[re] (the text is written in
but then scrawled through).29 Thus, by bringing just the rst line of stanza 1
back at the end (modied as a verso tronco), Mozart turns this part of the text, at
last, into a typical four-line stanza. At some stage after this draft, he also decided
to extend the opportunity for a cadenza. As a result, the end of second A section
(after the two full statements of stanza 1) reads torna la pace al core, torna la pace
al cor, la pace al cor [four bars rest] torna la pa-[cadenza]-ce al cor. The ternary
form, plus these additional repetitions, means that the aria focuses more on
Idomeneos having found peace in his heart than on his bounding happily off,
ourishing and with new vigour. This is probably a better dramatic outcome. But
an aria with no fewer than 13 iterations of pace still seems like an act of
desperation: it was eventually cut from the opera.
***

27 Heartz, Raaff s Last Aria, offers some useful comparisons, as does Bohmer, W. A. Mozarts
Idomeneo, 2526; see also Everist, The Performers of Idomeneo, 52. Mozarts four-page draft
for Torna la pace al core is reproduced in Heartz, Raaff s Last Aria, 526, 528, 531, 532, and
in Mozart, Idomeneo, K.366, with Ballet, K.367, II, 22730.
28 For example, on 30 December Mozart told his father that save for Idomeneos last aria,
Everything has been composed, but not yet written down.
29 Heartz, Raaff s Last Aria, 533, notes that removing this torna lo spento ardore may have
been to do with giving Raaff a better vowel for a long-held note (pa-ce rather than ar-do-re).

248

Tim Carter

There is another point in Idomeneo where Mozart unexpectedly (from Varescos

point of view) brings back words from the beginning of a text at its end: the great
quartet in Act III scene 3, Andro` ramingo e solo, where Idamante resolves at the
start, and again at the end, to leave Crete and wander alone through the world.30
Clearly, any opera composer is free to manipulate a libretto to suit a dramatic purpose, at least within certain limits xed by time and place, and Mozart certainly
continued to do so in and through his collaborations with Lorenzo da Ponte, if
less often than one might assume. He may well have believed that in an opera
the poetry must be altogether the obedient daughter of the music (so he wrote
to his father on 13 October 1781), but if my reading of the arias in Idomeneo
suggests (I would not say proves) anything at all, it is that Mozart could be sensitive to a texts syntax (those pronouns), to its rhetoric (how the argument owed
and where it ended), and to the dramatic consequences of treating it one way
rather than another. To judge by Torna la pace al core, he could also founder
when stymied by weak poetry and pressed for time.
The fact that the libretto exerts some manner of control over the composer is
obvious enough, if not always sufciently acknowledged. My broader point, however, also concerns its impact on the critic in terms of seeking to identify poetic
and musical choices and thus engaging with their interpretative and even performative
consequences. We cannot ask Mozart his reasons for composing an aria as he did
and even if we could, he might not have known them but that does not prevent
us from interrogating the results. Bringing not just the content but also the structure of the text back into the frame aids that process signicantly, while making
clearer still just how a composer might make opera function as drama.

30 See Marita P. McClymonds, The Great Quartet in Idomeneo and the Italian Opera Seria
Tradition, in Wolfgang Amade` Mozart: Essays on His Life and Music, ed. Stanley Sadie (Oxford,
1996), 44976. The printed libretto does not include this repetition (nor would one expect it
to), noting only that Idamante parte addolorato.

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