GLUCK : IPHIGÉNIE EN TAURIDE

IPHIGENIA IN TAURIS

Radio New Zealand Concert network 
Sunday 24th of June 2012 at 3-5 pm
Sunday 13th of March 2011 at 3-6 pm
Sunday 6th of January 2008 at 3 pm

 INTRODUCTION
COMPOSER
PREVIEW
REVIEW
LIBRETTO

Iphigénie en Tauride, an opera in four acts
Gluck reinterpreted the ancient Greek myth in this innovative masterpiece, a powerful story about rejecting the limitations of the past and insisting on a better future.
Iphigénia....................... Susan Graham
Orestes......................... Russell Braun
Pylades......................... Joseph Kaiser
Thoas............................ Mark S Doss
Diana............................ Lauren Segal
First Priestess................ Jacqueline Woodley
Second Priestess........... Mireille Asselin
Scythian man................. Philippe Sly
Old Servant................... Robert Pomakov
Greek woman............... Ambur Braid
Canadian Opera Company Chorus & Orch/Pablo Heras-Casado
(recorded in the Four Seasons Centre, Toronto, by the CBC)

The New York Metropolitan opera broadcasts are still coming to us in 2011, strange to say, by way of the European Broadcasting thingy. In the USA they receive them "live"; they give them to us on "live" recordings, but we'll "live". (I advocate thorough spelling reform, but we could start there, by dropping the misleading -e off live [>liv], and give [>giv]; "live" (as in "alive") should be laiv.) I love [lav] this/these word/s "live": there is a host of "live" people in this opera, who are destined to be "un-live" or "non-live" soon rather than later, but they all end up by not ending, and being happy temporarily, but being a neurotic bunch they will surely sink into new miseries.

We can use the NYMet's own study-guides as our explanatory notes. (PS: no, we can't anymore! I have put the failed links at the bottom of the page.) But here are some additional thoughts.

Iphigenia appears in two operas by Gluck; the earlier one (also for Paris, and in French) is Iphigénie en Aulide (Iphigenia in Aulis). This Tauris one has a counterpart by Piccinni (not Puccini nor Pacini, and not pronounced like piccaninny). Campra was another composer who was drawn to the subject.

We already know these classical characters, a dysfunctional royal family from the time of the Trojan war: King Agamemnon is murdered by his consort Klytemnestra, and Princess Elektra gives the vengeance-ax for the revenge-act to Prince Orestes, and when the deed is done Orestes is hounded by the Furies. But when we are involving ourselves in Trojan operas (Elektra, Idomeneo) we forget that there was another sister, named Iphigenia. She was to be a human sacrifice, to make the winds blow, so that Agamemnon could keep his appointment with his fellow-Greek invaders on the beach at Troy, and do his bit for the war effort. Sometimes she is done to death on the altar, but in other versions of the tale she is whisked away to the land of the Scythians (Tauris: Crimea, on the Black Sea) to become a priestess of Artemis/Diana. In this opera she is called on to perform the rite of human sacrifice on Orestes.

Goethe wrote a drama on Iphigenia, which I struggled through when I was a schoolboy, to prove to myself that I could read classical Deutsch. And an English translation of the Greek play by Euripides has just popped up in a box of books beside my desk.

Susan Graham (who has been Dido in The Trojans by Berlioz) is Iphigenia. Placido Domingo is not conducting the opera (in 2008 he was musical director for Romeo and Juliet, on the same day as the broadcast of this opera; he gets away with being Siegmund, but not Romeo); he is singing in it, taking the role of Orestes, which is for baritone.

Sunday 13th of March 2011 at 3-6 pm
Iphigénie....................... Susan Graham
Oreste........................... Plácido Domingo
Pylade........................... Paul Groves
Thoas............................ Gordon Hawkins
Diane............................ Julie Boulianne
First priestess................ Lei Xu
Second priestess........... Cecelia Hall
Minister/Scythian........... David Won
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Patrick Summers

COMPOSER
BACKGROUND
UNDERGROUND
CHARACTERS
SYNOPSIS
STORYLINE (no pictures of Placido and Susan)
ANALYSIS