Unexpectedly Long

It doesn't seem possible that the Metropolitan Opera presented it's first performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Idomeneo in 1982, but that is the case. The original premiere of the opera took place at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich on 29 January 1781, two days after Mozart's twenty-fifth birthday. The reason the opera is not as well known as Don Giovanni or The Marriage of Figaro is that it is an opera seria, written in a style that was fading from view in the composer's era. All the characters are associated with Agamemnon in some way, and the libretto contains many allusions to the Trojan War...