Composed for wedding celebrations at the imperial court, Gluck’s 1765 opera “Telemaco” never came up to expectations. Nevertheless, this colourful opera deserves to be rediscovered, as is about to happen at the Schwetzingen Festival.

Gluck’s opera Il Telemaco, ossia L’isola di Circe is one of his least-known, and at the same time varied, stage works amongst his Viennese music-theatrical output. Commissioned by the imperial court, the two-act dramma per musica was premiered on 30 January 1765 in the Burgtheater on the occasion of the wedding of the future Emperor Joseph II to Maria Josepha of Bavaria. The libretto by Marco Coltellini, a pupil of Calzabigi, was only partially suitable for this occasion. It deals with Telemaco’s (Telemach’s) search for his missing father and their meeting on the island of the sorceress Circe, together with her despair faced with the threat of the loss of the beloved Odysseus. The happy meeting of father and son is overshadowed, as is the new love affair of Telemaco and Asteria, by the destructive delusions of the abandoned Circe and the tragedy resulting from this: the final climax of the work is formed by a curse from the sorceress and the transformation of her island into wilderness, set by Gluck as a stirring accompagnato recitative.
This conclusion was not considered suitable as the ending to a wedding opera – either in content or musically – and so a short addition to the libretto was provided by the appearance of Amor as a “Deus ex machina”, which in turn transforms the scenery into charming surroundings, and forces a happy ending with a concluding celebratory dance. According to contemporary reports, for the final ballet performed at the premiere Gluck re-used an older dance scene, which “shocked the spectators not a little”.

As an appropriate work of homage for the newly-married couple, Gluck’s Telemaco was therefore unconvincing, but it was probably never intended as such, despite the composer’s concessions to courtly demands. Conventional seria elements as well as schematically structured secco recitatives and da capo arias are still found in the opera, which was written just a few years after the ‘reform’ works  Don Juan ou Le Festin de pierre (1761) and Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). But in addition to these, the first act of Telemaco in particular shows large-scale scenic structures with action choruses and integrated dance scenes characteristic of Gluck’s ‘reform’ operas. Solo arias and ensembles alternate, as do action-packed sections with lyrical passages; a simple melodic shape serves the direct, natural expression and takes the place of true virtuoso coloratura.

Overshadowed by Orfeo and Alceste which followed (1767), as a hybrid between the traditional and the progressive, Telemaco did not initially become well-known. The opera was repeated once, three days after its premiere, and was only heard again in concert performances in Vienna, Salzburg and New York in the 1980s and in a staged production at the English Bach Festival in 2003. Performance material has been prepared, based on the 1972 edition by Karl Geiringer published in the Gluck Complete Works, so that Gluck’s Telemaco can once more be staged at the 2011 Schwetzingen Festival and be rescued from oblivion for posterity.

Tanja Gölz
(Translation: Elizabeth Robinson)