Idomeneo, Finale Vision

“I do believe in Mozart as though he were God. If God is someone that’s supposed to give you comfort, I think of him and I listen to him when I’m in trouble.”
– Maurice Sendak (quoted in Wild Things Are Happening, p.210)

This image, created for Sendak’s production of Idomeneo, is a perfect synthesis of two of Sendak's greatest loves: Mozart and Blake.

At the time that Sendak was working on his production, Idomeneo was one of Mozart's relatively obscure operas; it had scarcely been performed in the centuries following its premiere in 1781. The UK premiere took place in 1934 and it was first performed in the US at Tanglewood in 1947, when Sendak was 19. Many major opera companies began commissioning productions in the second half of the 20th century, including Los Angeles Music Center Opera who contacted Sendak following his work on Mozart’s The Magic Flute for Houston Grand Opera in 1981 and The Goose of Cairo for New York City Opera in 1984.

The angel and monster seen in Sendak’s finale vision here directly emulate Blake’s own Biblical visions. Sendak studied Blake’s works at The Morgan Library, specifically the drawing Behemoth and Leviathan (1805–10) which was purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1903. The ink-and-watercolor-on-paper is part of Blake’s illustrations for the Book of Job, depicting the moment when God shows Job the earth monster Behemoth and sea monster Leviathan. Sendak saw Blake’s leviathan as a perfect match for the monster in Mozart's opera who is sent by Neptune to torture Idomeneus and his family, and Sendak creatively reinterprets Blake's imagery in praise of his own higher power, Mozart.