A father’s love, the fury of the gods, and the fight against fate. 

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SFCM's Rebecca Plack.

The themes of Mozart’s opera Idomeneo run deep, all revolving around the aftermath of King Idomeneo promising the god Neptune that he will sacrifice the first person he sees if he and his crew survive a terrible storm. Upon arriving onshore, he is horrified to find the person he sees is his own son. 

“People might take the plot at face value,” Rebecca Plack, one of SFCM’s Music History and Literature professors said. “And that’s fine and important to let the characters and music move you, but there is so much more context that was very real for Mozart, and for his audiences, and a lot of that is encoded in the music and the plot.” 

Platt was asked to dive deep into the ideas behind Idomeneo for the San Francisco Opera as it held 90-minute previews ahead of its premiere. “When I talk with audiences, they want to know the composer and characters, but I like to give them more information, like what’s the cultural context of the opera? How does that help us understand the plot better? Knowing more context can also help keep us in the story.” 

Plack is both music historian and performer. In addition to being a 2003 SFCM Voice alumna with a performance career, Plack also studied music history and specializes in the music of the 18th and 19th centuries. “I like to think of myself as a bridge. I think of myself that way at the Conservatory; I love teaching music history to performers,” Plack said, adding she thinks of herself as a “hybrid” between both professional areas: “I really ping-pong back-and-forth between performance and music history.” Plack worked at SFCM from 2009 to 2018 and returned full-time in 2022. 

For Idomeneo Plack has several layers of context for audiences, beginning with the era in which a 24-year-old Mozart wrote Idomeneo in 1781. This time in history was known as the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason. “Idomeneo is set in ancient Greece and if you lived then, if a god told you to do something, you were going to do it,” Plack explains, “But during the Enlightenment, this time that is not how they wanted monarchs to behave: They wanted them to wrestle with these kinds of moral questions, instead of just absolute obedience to some unseen authority figure.” 

Mozart embodied Enlightenment ideals by showing conflict between the old order of blind obedience and the emergence of reason, love and agency. Idomeneo also signified a turning point for Mozart, making the beginning of a more mature style where he used the orchestra with bold innovation, creating waves of emotion that echo through every note. For the full breakdown of Plack's 90-minute preview, for a limited time, audiences can check out a virtual version. 

A scene from "Idomeneo." Photo by Charlie Kinross.

Knowing this piece of history lets audiences see and understand the story in a new light. It’s something Plack also instills in her music students at SFCM. “Young performers can feel stressed out because they're getting all this direction from all kinds of people and they feel like they have to do it right.” But, As Plack explains, when they learn the history and context behind a historical piece of music, it can unlock understanding on how to approach the piece. “How does knowing this kind of information help them perform the work? Knowing the answers to these questions can help them feel more relaxed.” 

“I love teaching music history,” Plack concludes, adding that knowing more about an older piece of music leads to a deeper understanding and better appreciation of it. “I don't believe in composer intent, but I do believe that the things that we know make an impact, and expanding what we know increases the impact of what we see." 

Idomeneo runs June 14 to 25 at the San Francisco Opera. 
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