CAPSULE REVIEW : ‘Idomeneo’ According to Sendak and Corsaro

Here we go again.

The wonders of a great opera are compromised by the gimmickry of a meddlesome director and designer. The problem becomes especially irksome when the music is sensitively conducted, exquisitely sung and elegantly played.

Take, for sad example, Mozart’s “Idomeneo” as staged by Frank Corsaro, illustrated by Maurice Sendak and conducted by Roderick Brydon for the Music Center Opera on Tuesday.

If our records are accurate, Los Angeles had never before seen a major staging of the lofty opera seria . Los Angeles still hasn’t seen a faithful representation of this stylized exploration of jealousy, devotion, heroism and renunciation on the island of Crete in the wake of the Trojan War.

Corsaro decided that the idiom needed to be juiced up. Forget classic nobility. Let’s have a psychosexual charade.

Idomeneo, the king of Crete, was really Leopold Mozart, the composer’s overbearing father. That was Corsaro’s irrelevant concept. Idamante, the troubled prince, was really Mozart himself. The opera, we were told, really concerns the complex love-hate relationship between the paternal despot and the youthful pretender to his aesthetic throne.

Everyone loves Maurice Sendak. He is a master of dark-edged humor, and his magical images cast their spell far beyond children’s books. With “Idomeneo,” however, he seems to have strayed into the wrong scenic milieu.

In many ways, this “Idomeneo” is best appreciated with eyes closed. Roderick Brydon, who has replaced the originally scheduled Christof Perick, conducts with tender, lyrical, reasonably stylish care. The cast functioned as an ensemble of virtuosos. Siegfried Jerusalem, the most celebrated Wagnerian tenor of the day, brought manly dignity, ample agility, dynamic finesse and burnished tone--some passing pitch problems notwithstanding--to the title role. Susan Quittmeyer complemented him--and Corsaro’s directorial conceit, too--as an Idamante of tremendous suavity and sensitivity. She has become a trouser-role specialist with few peers.

Pamela Coburn looked a bit robust for the sweet-ingenue platitudes of Ilia, but she sang with limpid, angelic tone. Although her soprano isn’t as dark or as heavy as cliche might have it in this evil role, Christine Weidinger swept all before her with an Elettra of galvanizing passion and stunning vocal bravura.