26 February 2011: Gluck, Iphigénie en Tauride
Opera composed by Cristoph Willibald Gluck. Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. Conductor, Patrick Summers. Production, Stephen Wadsworth. Iphigénie, Susan Graham; Oreste, Placido Domingo; Pylade, Paul Groves; Thoas, Gordon Hawkins
There is not a lot of action in this opera, based on a play by Euripides which represents the alternative story about Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and sister of Orestes, who in this version is rescued from death and sent into exile in Taurus, where she serves the enemy Scythians as the high priestess of Diana. She is believed to be dead. And so her brother Orestes, in the company of his friend and devoted follower Pylades, who are blown by unpropitious yet ultimately favorable winds to Scythia, likewise believes that his sister Iphigenia has perished. The basic plot mechanism, then, is one of ultimate recognition, deferred for as long as dramatic and musical ingenuity can prevail. It is one of those Euripidean plays that has a sad and somber tone throughout but at the last is redeemed in a happy ending. As usual, we are not informed in the Met’s handout who the librettist was; recourse to my handy New Kobbe’s Complete Opera Book tells me it was Francois Guillard. In any case, Euripides has been adapted to the ethos and style of French classicism, one principle of which is that nothing much happens on stage but a great deal happens off.
In this case French classicism comes to serve the ultimate purpose of highly emotional music: the less that happens on stage, the more the composer is free to explore and exploit the emotional ramifications of stasis. He does this in a perfectly brilliant manner, by imposing a fraught hopelessness on both principals, along with a nobly selfless friendship on Oreste and Pylades that reminds one of a similar friendship in Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers. For nearly three hours we are treated to the melancholy spectacle of two characters, Oreste and Iphigénie, neither of whom believes that his or her sibling is alive, sings of his or her frustration and despair in a series of arias, duets, and trios (the third character is of course Pylades) that are a joy and a wonder to hear. This is peerless music, most especially the aria sung by Susan Graham as Iphigénie at the end of Act I. One recognizes this aria as a familiar concert and audition piece. As Graham said in an interview between acts, this role is a wonderful one for a mezzo soprano, who is usually singing someone’s brother (she really did say that — a reference, I think, to the frequent presence of “trouser roles” in comic opera) or someone’s sister, but almost never the title character. And so the opportunity for a singer with this range to sing Gluck’s music is a match made in heaven.
The other opportunity, equally welcome, is not nearly so rare. I refer to the presence of Placido Domingo in the role of Oreste, performing the character of a young man whose life is a torment and