Le 30 juin 2017
de 14h00 à 14h30
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
amphithéâtre 4
Séance précomposée - Analyzing Mozart's Operas: External Stakes, Intrinsic Challenges
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Lauri Suurpää
According to Reinhard Strohm, eighteenth-century opera seria was “a vehicle for moral edification and intellectual discourse about human nature. Its subjects comprised, in the sense of Aristotle’s Poetics, both the passions (‘pathos’) and the virtues or social norms (‘ethos’).” As an opera seria, Mozart’s Idomeneo is preoccupied with dilemmas between passions and moral duty. Rescued from a shipwreck, Idomeneo, the Cretan king, makes a vow to kill the first person he meets. In his first-act aria “Vedrommi intorno,” he contemplates the consequences of his vow, facing the conflict between emotions (pathos) and moral duty (ethos). In the recitative that follows, he meets his victim, who turns out to be his son Idamante. Idomeneo accordingly acts coldly towards his son and orders Idamante not to see him again. Idamante’s subsequent emotional confusion governs his ensuing aria, “Il padre adorato.” This presentation analyzes the two arias, examining the characters’ emotional conflict “relief vs. lament” (pathos) and their moral duty (ethos). At the end of their respective arias, both Idomeneo and Idamante accept the primacy of duty. The musical analysis combines four perspectives: (1) form and phrase structure; (2) voice-leading structure; (3) meter; (4) expressive narrative. After first clarifying the arias’ overall organizations, the analysis mostly concentrates on their beginnings (the introduction of the emotional conflict) and endings (acceptance of duty).
