The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (9 page)

Recording

DVD: Anne-Sofie von Otter (Alceste); John Eliot Gardiner (cond.).
Arthaus 160.

Iphigénie
en
Tauride

Four acts. First performed Paris, 1779.

Libretto by Nicolas-François Guillard

Drawn, like
Alceste,
from a tragedy by Euripides,
Iphigénie
en
Tauride
is widely considered Gluck’s masterpiece.
It followed five years after
Iphigénie
en
Aulide,
which treats of an earlier episode in the character’s mythological life and revolves, like
Alceste,
around the question of a human sacrifice demanded by the Gods.
Iphigénie
en
Tauride
is even more concentrated, eliminating the long
ballets-divertissements
that were a great feature of the French style of the time and integrating both dancers and chorus into the main action.
There are no obvious set-pieces in
Iphigénie
en
Tauride
– for sheer dramatic fluency and depth of characterization, there are few operas to match it.

Plot

Iphigénie is a Greek priestess, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestre, sent by the goddess Diana to the island of Tauris, where she is forced to sacrifice human beings on her altar.
Unknown to her, her brother Oreste has killed their mother Clytemnestre in revenge for her murder of Agamemnon.

As the opera opens, Iphigénie beg the gods to calm a terrible storm.
She despairs – in a dream, she has seen herself about to kill her brother Oreste.
Thoas, King of the Scythians, is terrified by an oracle which commands him to sacrifice any stranger who lands on the island or to face death himself.
Oreste and his friend Pylade are washed up on the island by the storm and Thoas duly condemns them to death.

Oreste is consumed with guilt, both on account of his murder of Clytemnestre and for the plight in which he has put the loyal Pylade.
The Furies hound Oreste.
Iphigénie confronts Oreste, but they do not recognize each other.
Oreste tells her the story of the deaths of Agamemnon and Clytemnestre and pretends that the assassin Oreste then killed himself.

Iphigénie cannot understand the pity she feels for the nameless man.
She resolves to release him and sacrifice only Pylade.
But Oreste begs to die in Pylade’s place; reluctantly, Iphigénie agrees and Pylade is set free.

As Iphigénie is about to slit Oreste’s throat, he accidentally reveals his true identity.
Iphigénie throws down the sacrificial knife and embraces her long-lost brother.
But Thoas appears in fury at Iphigénie’s evasions: as he is about to kill Oreste himself, Pylade returns with soldiers and in the ensuing battle, Thoas is killed.

Only the intervention of the goddess Diana stops the bloodshed: she decrees that Oreste and Iphigénie will return to reign in Greece.

What to listen for

A score so taut and continuously coherent that one cannot talk of its ‘highlights’.
Note, however, the economy of orchestration (trombones accompanying the arrival of the Furies, the oboe echoing and enhancing the wretchedness of Iphigénie’s aria, ‘O malheureuse Iphigénie’, in Act II) and the use of poundingly insistent rhythmic pulsion to indicate situations of dramatic terror and urgency.

Mozart’s
Don
Giovanni,
Berlioz’s
Les
Troyens
and Wagner’s
Lohengrin
are only three of the many operas to emulate
Iphigénie’s
solemn tragic grandeur and sense of the sublime.

In performance

A famous and much-travelled production, conceived in 1974 by the choreographer Pina Bausch for the Tanztheater Wuppertal, used Gluck’s 1781 German version of the opera: the action was entirely danced, with the singers performing off-stage.
For WNO, Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser created a memorably grim, vaguely modern setting, with Tauris interpreted as a bombed-out war zone, stricken by fear and deprivation.
Iphigénie
en
Tauride
is too austere and serious to be widely popular, but no true opera lover should miss a chance of experiencing the tremendous impact it exerts in a good performance.

Recording

CD: Diana Montague (Iphigénie); John Eliot Gardiner (cond.).
Philips 416 148

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

(1756–91)

Idomeneo, Re di Creta
(
Idomeneo, King of Crete
)

Three acts. First performed Munich, 1781.

Libretto by Giovanni Varesco

The young Mozart became tired of writing aria-dominated opera in the style of Italian
opera
seria.
Idomeneo
, written when he was twenty-five to a commission from the Elector of Bavaria for the court opera house in Munich, shows him experimenting with the reforms being proposed at the time by Gluck.
Mozart’s letters to his father in Salzburg suggest the difficulties he had persuading the librettist and a cast of varying abilities and egocentricities to sacrifice easy applause in the interest of brevity and dramatic credibility.
During rehearsal, Mozart made many cuts and alterations, leaving today’s productions with a number of options – including the omission of the Act III arias for Idomeneo and Elettra.

After the first performance, Mozart pondered writing another, less compromised version of the opera in German, giving the role of Idomeneo to a bass and bringing the whole opera closer to the Gluckian model.
In the event, he made only minor revisions when the opera was revived in Vienna in 1786, transposing the role of Idamante from soprano castrato to tenor (it is now often sung by a mezzo-soprano), abbreviating the secondary role of the High Priest Arbace, and moderating the showiness of Idomeneo’s big aria ‘Fuor del mar’.

The libretto is adapted from a long-forgotten French opera of 1712, reduced from five acts to three, shorn of its prologue and provided with a happy ending which accords with the moral optimism of the Enlightenment.

Plot

King Idomeneo, returning from the Trojan War to his homeland, Crete, is caught on the sea in a terrible storm.
He prays to the god Neptune to allow him to live, promising that when he reaches the shore he will make a sacrifice of the first human being he sees.
Neptune agrees to the cruel bargain, but Idomeneo is aghast when it is his son Idamante who awaits him as he emerges from the shipwreck.

The Trojan princess Ilia has already been sent back to Crete as a prisoner of war.
Idamante hopes to marry her, and forge a peaceful alliance between their peoples.
Although he is a member of the enemy, Ilia is slowly won over by his sincerity.
But Princess Elettra, a refugee from Argos, loves Idamante and is determined that he shall not marry Ilia.
Idomeneo’s adviser Arbace suggests to Idomeneo that he secretly send Idamante with Elettra back to Argos, as a way of avoiding the sacrifice.
But as they are about to leave, a massive storm breaks out and a monster emerges from the waves, raised by Neptune in fury at the attempt to deceive him.

Idamante prepares to battle with the sea monster which has ravaged Crete with the plague.
As he and Ilia declare their love, Elettra rushes in mad with jealousy, accompanied by Idomeneo, who reveals for the first time the truth about the vow he made to Neptune.
Idamante kills the monster and then nobly offers to be sacrificed, as does Ilia.
But Neptune now commands that Idomeneo abdicates the throne, and that Idamante rules in his place, with Ilia as his wife.
Elettra storms off in fury, but Idomeneo is happy to stand down and restore peace to Crete.

What to listen for