ABSTRACT
Telemaco, ossia L'isola di Circe, a two-act dramma per musica on a libretto by Marco Coltellini, comes nineteenth on the list of the full-scale Italian operas that Gluck composed across the span of nearly a quarter of a century, and is his last "traditional" opera seria. The "case" against Telemaco has fixed principally on two linked areas: the weaknesses of Coltellini's libretto, and the opera's supposedly hybrid musical idiom, resulting from its mixture of forward-looking elements and the soi-disant retrogressive ones belonging to the traditional opera seria. If Telemaco is examined without any a priori convictions about the rectitude of Gluck's idiom, formal construction or vocal writing, it reveals an astonishing match of musical to dramatic substance, an astonishing individuality. In Telemaco traditional opera seria is the domain of Circe, her island and her magic arts.
