Iphigenie En Aulide / Iphigenie En Tauride

Epic and intimate
You don't see productions of Iphigénie en Aulide coming along very often, or indeed much of C.W. Gluck's works these days which, considering the importance of the composer to the world of opera, is something of a mystery. Even more rarely do you see it paired the way it is here at the De Nederlandse Opera with its sister work Iphigénie en Tauride, but the two works are perfectly complementary. Composed at different times with a different approach to Gluck's reformist agenda, they were perhaps never intended to be performed together, but the pairing of the two works side-by-side like this at least allows those differences in approach - so important to the progress and development of the traditional form of the modern opera - to be better appreciated.

The subjects may be classical ones from Euripides, but by getting right back to basics of dramatic situation and expression, Gluck was able to find deeply human characteristics - love, anger, betrayal, vengeance...

Back to the Future ... of Opera
The standard narrative of musicology has always been that Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787) was the key reformer of opera history, who swept away the conventions of "opera seria" as they had congealed in the libretti of Metastasio, who purged operatic music of "recitativo secco" and the monumental repetitiveness of the da capo aria, who put those flashy ornamentalizing singers in their proper place of subordination to the composer, and who set the table for the symphonic operas of Wagner. However, as is often true, the accepted wisdom leaves a lot out of account. It's a long century from Gluck to Wagner, during which da capo and bel canto continued to thrive and the libretti of Metastasio were set to music as eagerly as Gluck himself had done both before and after his "reforms" in Vienna in the 1760s. Gluck's best pupil turned out to be Antonio Salieri, that backward-looking composer of opera buffa. Haydn's and Paisiello's operas show little response to Gluck's concerns. Mozart...

First DVD/Blu-ray release of Aulide and Tauride together
While I can't really add to the outstanding reviews submitted by Nine and Bruno (except to reiterate how outstanding Véronique Gens and Anne Sofie von Otter are in their performances), I can give a little more information about the setting. Both operas on this release are set in a stylized, militarized modern-day setting. While I would normally prefer a more traditional setting (especially when viewing operas for the first time), I really enjoyed this interpretation. The orchestra is set on the stage, behind the performers, and the chorus is set behind the orchestra.

Les Musiciens du Louvre play beautifully, and Marc Minkowski does an expert job conducting these performances. The Blu-ray picture is crisp and clear, and the sound production can't be bettered, despite the slight echo at De Nederlandse Opera Het Muziektheater. Extras include behind-the-scenes documentaries for each opera, and a set of trailers for other Opus Arte releases. I would love to have...

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