Oh smania! … D'Oreste, d'Ajace (Idomeneo)

Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, commissioned Idomeneo for the Munich carnival of 1781; Mozart, then twenty-four, left Salzburg for the rehearsals and wrote home constantly about singers he considered inadequate, cutting and rewriting to fit them. Giambattista Varesco adapted a French libretto by Danchet that Campra had already set in 1712. The result keeps the frame of opera seria but fills it with accompanied recitative, choruses and orchestral writing of a density the form had not carried before. The premiere was given at the Cuvilliés Theatre on 29 January 1781.