Idomeneo Back at the Met

In the 15 years that Ben Heppner has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, the Canadian heldentenor's career has come full circle with the current revival of Idomeneo, the role with which he made his company debut in 1991.

Since then, he's tackled some of the most demanding tenor roles in the repertoire, making a name for himself as the leading Wagnerian tenor of our time. He performed a now-legendary Tristan in 1999, alongside Jane Eaglin. After taking time off in 2002-2003 to lose 100 pounds, he was back at the Met, sounding as good as ever-first as Aeneas in the company premiere of Berlioz's Les Troyens and then reprising Tristan. Just last year, he delivered wonderful accounts of Lohengrin, Florestan, and his first-ever Parsifal.

A vocal force to be reckoned with, Heppner is the key reason to catch the Met's current revival of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's 1982 production, which is looking a little dusty these days. However, James Levine's exacting and intricate reading of the tuneful Mozart score and a few standout supporting performances don't hurt.

Idomeneo, the earliest of Mozart's seven mature operas, was the slowest to gain acceptance in the modern repertoire. Ponnelle's production marked the Met's premiere. Idomeneo tells of the King of Crete, Idomeneo, who returns home after many years fighting in the Trojan Wars. In return for the king's safe homecoming, however, Neptune exacts an oath from Idomeneo, who vows to sacrifice the first man he encounters once on soil. Sure enough, who but the king's son, Idamante, should stumble upon his washed-up father? In the remaining two acts, Idomeneo must come to terms with his paternal duty on the one hand and religious obligation on the other. But don't worry-everyone turns out fine in the end-except for the conniving love-interest Elettra, who goes mad and dies rather excitingly.

A few months ago, the Deutsche Opera in Berlin came under attack for its controversial production of Idomeneo, which featured severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad, alongside that of Neptune. Don't expect any such provocation from Ponnelle's production, where a massive stone head of Neptune vies with the singers for domination of the stage. The singers usually won.

Heppner started out curiously understated. Singing with ease and agility, he needed some time to warm up to the role. Once he had, though, he sang with undeniable power and clarion pitch. It was a performance only enhanced by his naturalistic and unmannered acting. Singing Idamante was the formidable American mezzo Kristine Jepson. She sang with enough force and determination to communicate her character's despair and disbelief on a down-to-earth, unsentimental level. Still, she was a little shaky upstairs and didn't always clip the ends of her phrases.

The Greek princess Ilia, beloved of Idamante, was sung by soprano Nicole Heaston. She was best in her middle range and often produced shrill high notes. With her intense quiver and overacting, her performance often had the trappings of caricature. Her doomed rival Elettra, sung by Olga Makarina, was far more satisfying. Though also guilty of over-acting, she sang with a colorful, honeyed voice that could modulate from dark to rich to sparkling. Making his debut as Arbace, the king's advisor, was a sturdy and dependable Jeffrey Francis, though he began to show some strain in the second act.

Mozart's music is wonderfully lush and ornamental, and surprising for an opera seria, it is through-composed, or lacking repetition. Taken as a whole, the work is full of harmonic and melodic continuities that anticipate subsequent masterpieces, such as Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. In the pit, James Levine-a long-time champion of the work-conducted a supple yet dramatic account. The overture sounded jaunty, in a breathless fashion that stripped away any sense of pomposity. Throughout, Levine highlighted the athletic woodwinds while ensuring that the singers were audible at all times.