Shows what I know: I thought the premise of this opera was some wild-ass fanfiction, but no, it turns out that it's largely based on a Euripides play. That's what I get for not knowing my Greek drama as well as I should! My punishment is harsh yet just.
Anyway, that premise which seemed crazy to poor benighted me: it turns out that when Agamemnon tried to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so that the gods would him so with his guys to kill some Trojans, Diana actually magically whisked her away at the last moment to be high priestess at her temple in Tauris. That's the good news; the bad news is that the full job title is apparently "murder priestess," and she has to sacrifice foreigners to try to propitiate gods, and it's not at all clear what Diana's motives were supposed to have been here. Anyway, Orestes and his pal Pylades show up as prisoners, and they're going to be sacrificed. But then they're not, Pylades goes for reinforcements (don't think too hard about the timeline here), the siblings are reunited, and everyone's happy, except the bad king responsible for ordering all these sacrifices. He is deceased.
The bulk of the drama revolves around neither Iphigenia nor Orestes knowing the other's name for an infeasibly long time; this would be obnoxious if this were a tragedy, but it's not, so it's all good. The other bulk (things can have two bulks!) consists of Orestes and Pylades asserting their love for one another; Iphigenia can save one of them, but only one (for reasons that are never even gestured at), and they're all "sacrifice me!" "no! sacrifice me!" There seems to be a distinct homoerotic subtext to their relationship, and if thisis to be believed, Gluck would have been perfectly aware of this. So that's interesting.
This feels like more of a concrete story with characters and everything than Orfeo ed Euricide, which is more mythic. But what hasn't changed is that Gluck writes some great music. I read herethat Schubert "asserted that there could be nothing more beautiful in the world," which is quite a recommendation. This peformance--of what seems a pretty traditional production--features Susan Graham as Iphigenia, and it certainly gives her more do do than La damnation de Faust
did. She feels like the appropriate singer for the role. Plácido Domingo is probably if you spend any time thinking about it too old to be playing Orestes, but he's good enough that this is easy to overlook. Just really great stuff all around. And if you want some actual Iphigenia-related Gluck fanfiction, you could check out this one.
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