Film

Idomeneo

Name: Idomeneo
Genre: Music
Released: 1983
Cast: Philip Langridge, Jerry Hadley, Yvonne Kenny, Carol Vaness, Thomas Hemsley

Stage-musical adaptation

Mozart's final opera seria, filmed live at Glyndebourne in 1983. A Cretan king returns from war to find his son and a captive Trojan princess caught in a divine prophecy. It's baroque spectacle meeting intimate human catastrophe—arias of astonishing beauty suspended over a family torn apart by duty and love. For anyone who thinks opera is remote or dusty.

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Don Giovanni1979

Losey's film of Mozart's masterpiece. Dark, sensual, and theatrically alive in ways that capture what Idomeneo attempts—the marriage of divine retribution and human passion, with music that can break you.

But The Don is a cruel man at the centre of the story, which makes this feel bleak. Not uplifting, even when the music soars.

Così fan tutte1992

Mozart at his most inventive, exploring love as a game people play. The music is effortless and gorgeous. A Glyndebourne production with a clarity that makes the score's architecture visible.

But The plot—two men testing their girlfriends' faithfulness—is cynical and a bit mean-spirited if you think about it too hard.

The Magic Flute1975

Ingmar Bergman's film version. Mystical, visually stunning, and it captures the sense of ceremony and initiation that opera can do better than almost any art form. A completely different mood from Idomeneo but same composer's transcendence.

But Bergman's interpretation is idiosyncratic and sometimes slow. His vision of the opera isn't everyone's, and some find it pretentious.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Idomeneo

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Fanny and Alexander1982

Both use baroque or operatic formality to explore how duty and family obligation destroy individuals. Both ask: what happens when love cannot survive the social order?

Bergman's three-hour family saga, right before his final period. A Swedish Christmas becomes a battleground between magic, sexuality, and harsh Protestant duty—the exact emotional register as Idomeneo. Not an opera, but constructed like one: every scene matters, every gesture is weighted.

But Glacially paced. Christmas becomes a trauma. If you want uplift or plot momentum, this withholds both. Some find it stuffy and self-serious.

L'Incoronazione di Poppea1979

Monteverdi, the grandfather of opera itself. If Idomeneo showed you what Mozart did with the form, here's where it came from. Monteverdi's harmonies are ancient and cutting—less polished than Mozart but more raw and alive.

But Early opera, uneven orchestration, and the plot involves seduction and betrayal without moral consequence. Unsettling rather than cathartic.

Berlioz: Les Troyens1983

Berlioz's vast, ambitious opera about the fall of Troy and Aeneas's doomed love for Dido. Idomeneo's theme again—duty versus love, prophecy crushing individuals—but with Romantic scale and emotional directness that's almost overwhelming.

But Five hours long. Requires patience and, honestly, love of 19th-century French grandeur. Can feel bloated to those who prefer Mozart's proportion.

Werther1986

Like Idomeneo, it traces how passionate feeling becomes incompatible with the world's demands, but where Mozart shows divine intervention, Massenet shows psychological collapse. A darker mirror.

Massenet's opera, but filmed as intimate cinema rather than grand theatre. A young man consumed by passion for an unattainable woman. The music is lush Romantic melody rather than Mozart's clarity, and the tragic ending is absolute and modern. Quiet, not bombastic.

But Deeply depressing. The protagonist's suffering is self-inflicted and pathological, not noble. Hardest to watch of the three.