Dramma per musica in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
When Idomeneo returns home to Crete from the destruction of Troy at the end of the war, he is caught in a storm off the coast. Fearing for his life, he promises the sea god that he will sacrifice the first person he meets on his return if he is allowed to reach land safely. However, the cruel implications of his promise only become clear to him when his own son Idamante, of all people, runs into his arms on his arrival ashore.
The storm that Idomeneo gets caught up in rages not only at sea, but also in Mozart's music and provides a deep insight into the emotional chaos of the protagonists, who are searchers in a shattered and broken world order: Wavering between their own moral concepts, love, responsibility and duty, they are also marked by the traumatizing experiences of war, with which the opera, which premiered in Munich in 1781, deals with themes and questions that still have an almost frightening topicality today.
