patrickdcyau, This concert aria is something of a curio in that it includes a virtuosic role for solo violin. It was written in Vienna in 1786 for insertion into a private performance of Idomeneo (which had been completed some six years earlier) at the home of Johann Adam, Prince of Auersperg. It was intended as an alternative opening to Act 2 of the opera, to be played on that occasion by Mozart’s friend, the violinist Count August Hatzfeld, and the tenor Baron Anton Pulini.”
Continues... (Although intended for the tenor rôle of Idamante, as a stand-alone aria the work is usually sung by a soprano.) Later he wrote another aria to these words (K. 505) as a “farewell gift” to the soprano Nancy Storace, and that version is perhaps better known than this, although the great Mozart scholar H.C. Robbins Landon said that K. 490 “must be accounted one of the most touching arias in all Mozart - the equal of anything in Figaro.”
