Popular Success for l’Olimpiade

JOSEF MYSLIVEČEK — L’OLIMPIADE — BOLOGNA — OLIVER VON DOHNÁNYI — 1778–2012

JOSEF MYSLIVEČEK MAKES L’OLIMPIADE MELODRAMATIC

This opera has to be considered first in the light of the Century of Enlightenment so deeply marked in Opera by Mozart. Yet Mysliveček keeps some forms and topics, or treatments of topics in pre-Mozartian style. He does not reach the modern times of the coming French Revolution and of course of Beaumarchais and his Figaro. I will start with these elements from the past that are dictated by the subject and at the same from which the composer takes no real distance.

A father, king what’s more, decides to give his daughter to any man who could win in a fair fight with another or several other contenders. This is shocking for the second half of the 18th century. Imagine Louis XVI having a fair tournament fight with some other young king in Europe to win Marie Antoinette. Ridiculous, but typical of some earlier feudal times, and definitely of Greek antiquity. We all think of Iphigenia who was sacrificed to the gods for the Greek fleet to be able to go to Troy and destroy it. We know the several generations of disturbance that this very act caused after the War against Troy.

But It starts with another absolutely shocking fact and this time for the Greeks themselves with the reference to the Olympic games. The athletes were competing in the nude to reveal everything and hide nothing, hence, to be absolutely honest. The fact that a feudal lord in feudal Europe — in some context also a Dame could have her champion — could pick some champion to fight in his name was common, though not for a woman, though some cases might be found. But in the Olympic reference of the title and in Greece such a fact, if, what’s more, kept secret, goes against all the rules of sports, fighting, even war. The one who fights must be declared the champion of the one he fights for. This is not the case here. A rather weak young man asks his very close friend (we are in Greece don’t forget) to fight and win the daughter of the local king in his place. If the friend, Megacle, wins against the other contenders, then he gets the prize but not for himself but for the other, Licida, and with no announcement about this arrangement…