Idomeneo, re di Creta, K366 (Idomeneus, King of Crete). Dramma per musica in three acts, K366, libretto by Giambattista Varesco. First performance: Munich, court theatre, 29 January 1781. Idomeneo bridges Mozart's final period of employment in Salzburg and his years in Vienna. It was the principal production of the Munich Carnival season in 1781 at the court theatre of Karl Theodor, former Elector Palatinate in Mannheim and since 1778 Elector of Bavaria. Idomeneo was well received, and the Elector was warm in his praise (Mozart reports him saying at rehearsal, ‘Who could believe that such great things could be hidden in so small a head?’). Nevertheless it seems to have been performed only three times, on 29 January and 5 and 12 February 1781. There is no record of a revival in Munich, where a performing score (not the autograph) and performing materials survive. Nor, as Mozart already hoped on his extended visit to Mannheim in 1777–8, did Karl Theodor offer him a job. Despite a single revival in Vienna in 1786, what is without question Mozart's finest serious opera was to him as much a source of frustration as of satisfaction.

1. Origin and composition

2. The subject

3. Synopsis

4. Genre, music and characterization

5. Revision and reception

Origin and composition

The commission for Idomeneo may have been obtained by the veteran tenor Anton Raaff, who had known Mozart since his 1777 Mannheim visit, and who took the title role.