Idomeneo is a 181-minute television film of the Metropolitan Opera's first staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1781 opera Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante, produced by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and performed by a cast headed by John Alexander, Hildegard Behrens, Ileana Cotrubaș, Luciano Pavarotti and Frederica von Stade under the direction of James Levine. It was recorded live on 6 November 1982, and telecast live in the United States by the Public Broadcasting Service series Live from the Metropolitan Opera. It has been released on VHS video cassette, Laserdisc and DVD.
Deutsche Grammophon DVD, 00440-073-4234
Le retour d'Idoménée by Jacques Gamelin, a painting housed in the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse
The auditorium of Munich's Residenztheater as it was in the nineteenth century
Electra at the tomb of Agamemnon with Orestes and Hermes, depicted on a red-figure pelike from Lucania in circa 380–370 BCE, from the collection of the Louvre
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian-language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, based on a 1705 play by Crébillion père, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. He probably chose the subject, though it may have been Mozart. The work premiered on 29 January 1781 at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany.
Front page of a bilingual vocal score
Page from Mozart's original score for Idomeneo, showing cancellations
Anton Raaff as Idomeneo in Munich
Title pages (Italian and German) from the first version of the original libretto
