MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus 1756-1791

[K366]. Idomeneo Rè di Creta Drama Eroico in tre atti

Accomodate per due violini, due viole & violoncello, (contra-basso ad-lib:) ... Liv : I --II] Prix 14 [12] Francs. [Parts]

Bonn: N. Simrock [PN 523], [1807].

Folio. Unbound, as issued. 1f. (recto title, verso blank) to each Liv[raison]. Engraved throughout. Uncut.

Liv. I (Acts 1 and 2):
Violino 1mo: [1] (blank), 2-26 pp.
Violino 2da: [1] (blank), 2-26 pp.
Viola 1ma: [1] (blank), 23, [i] (blank) pp.
Viola 2da: 19, [i] (blank) pp.
Basso & Violoncelle: 19, [i] (blank) pp.

Liv. II (Act 3):
Violino 1mo: 27-41, [i] (blank) pp.
Violino 2da: 27-43, [i] (blank) pp.
Viola 1ma: [1] (blank), 24-41, [i] (blank) pp.
Viola 2da: [1] (blank), 20-35, [i] (blank) pp.
Basso & Violoncelle: [1] (blank), 20-33, [i] (blank) pp.

Some wear, browning, and soiling, heavier to some leaves; occasional offsetting; edges dusty; pinhole to upper inner margins.

First Edition of this arrangement of the complete opera. Köchel 6, Anhang B to 366. RISM M and MM4225 (no copies in the U.S.).

Idomeneo, a "dramma per musica" in three acts to a libretto by Giovanni Battista Varesco after Antoine Danchet’s Idomenée, was first performed in Munich at the Residenztheater on 29 January 1781

"Having completed nine operatic works, Mozart, aged twenty-four, was commissioned to write an opera by the Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria, formerly of Mannheim, who had moved to Munich in January 1778. He began work in Salzburg in October 1780 and moved to Munich in November to complete the work with the singers, several of whom he knew from Mannheim days. The opera was successful but there were no further performances in other houses and the amateur performance in Vienna took place five years later." Robbins Landon: The Mozart Companion, p. 248.

"Idomeneo sprang from a specific tradition and far outstripped it. The happy auspices under which it was created brought forth from Mozart a work so demanding that it could hardly be performed elsewhere. Even the Mannheim-Munich forces were probably not ready for its boldness. "Magnificent," "expressive," "novel," "powerful," "and "strange," its first auditors called it, with the dominating impression certainly the last. For all but a few the profundities of this opera eroica were too deep. In the decade Mozart had left to live, it had already became a work dispossessed. This is perhaps one of the reasons why he loved it especially among all his works." Heartz: Mozart's Operas, p. 34.

"There may not be here the delicate psychological detail that we find in Figaro and Cosi fan tutti, or the sublime naturalness and simplicity of Die Zauberflote -- these would both have been completely foreign to the general style of the opera -- but there is a monumental strength and a white heat of passion that we find in this early work of Mozart's and shall never find again. Idomeneo is the first and last 'opera seria' that represents the complete and mature Mozart." Dent: Mozart's Operas (2nd ed.), p. 45.

Item #36335

Price: $1,200.00  other currencies