Although 'Iphigenia in Tauris' has often been produced in European opera houses, until this year American performances have been extremely rare. In the fall of 2006, a new production appeared at Lyric Opera of Chicago and went on to performances in San Francisco and Houston. The imminent local production, directed by Stephen Wadsworth, marks Seattle Opera's first-ever co-production with the Metropolitan Opera. Wadsworth is well known to Seattle audiences for his Wagner productions, but he also gave Seattle a dazzling production of Gluck's "Orpheus" in 1988. After performances in Seattle in October 2007, this production of "Iphigenia in Tauris" will travel to New York for performances at the Met in November ... 90 years after the previous Met performances of Gluck's masterpiece.
Christoph Willibald Gluck, born in Bavaria in 1714, was the son of a gamekeeper (forester). Up to 1762, Gluck had composed in the contemporary operatic style, cultivated chiefly in Italy, which was marked by music written primarily to give virtuoso singers opportunity to display their skill. As his career progressed, Gluck grew dissatisfied with the conventionalities of Italian opera, characterized by surface brilliance and overornamentation. He began to develop a style intended to restore opera to its original purpose of expressing in music the meaning or emotion conveyed by the words.
About 1760 he became acquainted with the Italian poet Raniero da Calzabigi, who wrote for him a libretto that admirably suited the composer's ideas concerning proper balance between words and music. The opera Gluck wrote on this text was "Orpheus and Eurydice," which was produced in Vienna in 1762 with great success and known as opera in the grand manner.
The first great reformer in the history of opera, Gluck occupies a special place between the Baroque masters of the form and Mozart, and eventually became a well-traveled and influential composer who wrote some 40 operas for theaters in Milan, Dresden, London, Rome, Copenhagen, Paris and Vienna. He taught music to Marie Antoinette, was renowned as a performer on the glass harmonica, married a rich girl half his age, was made a Knight of the Golden Spur by the Pope and even put in an appearance (as a ghost) in a short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann.
The reforms that Gluck inaugurated in opera met with violent opposition from composers, singers, critics and others devoted to the Italian operatic style. This opposition was particularly manifest in Paris, where from 1774 to 1781 a veritable war was waged between those who favored the reforms of Gluck and those who championed Italian opera. Even after the success of "Iphigenie en Aulide" in Paris in 1774, the partisans of Italian opera criticized Gluck's music severely and claimed that the Neapolitan operatic composer Niccolo Piccini was superior to him. The director of the Opera commissioned the two rivals each to compose an opera on the same text, "Iphigenia in Tauris." The Gluck version turned out to be his masterpiece. Produced in Paris in 1779, it met with tremendous success; the Piccini version, following in 1781, was adjudged inferior.
Gluck's reforms made a lasting mark on opera. The principles for which he stood influenced the work of such later composers as Mozart, Maria Luigi Carlo, Ludwig van Beethoven and Wagner.
In 1781 Gluck adapted the opera for performances in Vienna, where it was sung in German instead of the original French. It was later reworked in German in the mid-19th century by Peter Cornelius, and later by Richard Strauss, who built on Cornelius' foundation.
Richard Strauss (no relation to waltz king Johann) was a great proponent of gothic horror stories, composing music to accompany ancient mythic stories of blood and guts. The Met in New York City presented Strauss's edition five times in 1916, but "Iphigenia" has been a stranger to the Met stage ever since. In 1916 "Iphigenia" was also presented in England and critiqued by none other than George Bernard Shaw, who thought it was perfection and deserved more recognition.
Gluck perished of a stroke in Vienna in 1787, four years before Mozart died. Among his chief mourners was his pupil, friend and collaborator Antonio Salieri, widely (albeit wrongly) known today as Mozart's rival.
THE STORY:
A true Greek tragedy in every gory detail. A noble family, dedicated to vengeance and bloodshed. Iphigenia, High Priestess of Diana among the barbarous Scythians, comes from the original dysfunctional family. Her father, the Greek king Agamemnon, sacrificed her to the gods in exchange for smooth winds so he could sail his armada to Troy to fight the Trojan War. But to avenge Iphigenia, his wife Clytemnestra murdered him when he came home. Unbeknownst to either parent, Iphigenia was not, in fact, killed: the goddess Diana whisked her away from the sacrificial altar to Tauris, a distant kingdom where she has been a very unwilling High Priestess ever since, responsible for offering human sacrifices to Diana. Supposedly dead sister reunites with her long-lost brother and his best friend, bringing an ancient saga about the cycle of violence to a happy ending.
And if it is all Greek to you, you can join Speight Jenkins, stage director Stephen Wadsworth, set designer Thomas Lynch and maestro Gary Thor Wedow for a conversation about the lasting legacy of Gluck's revolutionary work and the creation of this new high-profile Metropolitan opera co-production. This three-hour symposium, Saturday, Oct. 6, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m/ in Nesholm Family Lecture Hall at McCaw Hall, will take you deeper into the themes, music and artistry that you will find in this Seattle Opera première. Seating is limited. Admission cost of $30 includes refreshments.
"Orpheus and Eurydice," Gluck's first opera in the grand manner, was presented in Seattle in 1988 in the old opera house with Vinson Cole in the title role and the Mark Morris dance troupe providing the ballet sequences. 1988 was a sad year for me, and the production is still very clear in my mind. My husband had died a few months before the opening of the opera, and I attended the production very well aware of the empty seat beside me, and remember wishing that I could take a trip to the underworld to bring him back as Orpheus did with Eurydice.
The ballet sequences were a bit long. Every time the audience got ready to applaud, another dancer sprang forth - finally, to be greeted with "Oh, S***!!!" followed by a gasp and a few giggles from the audience. The dancing did end at last, giving the audience a chance for applause all the louder to include the unknown commentator in providing a bit of light relief.
THE MUSIC:
Gluck memorably evokes the storm in his orchestra through a number of musical effects, most unusually, the piccolos doubling the line of the violins at the augmented fourth - a dissonant interval long forbidden in Western music. Foreign music for foreign cultures. When the chorus of Scythians dance around the captive Orestes and Pylades, you'll hear the orchestra illustrating their savage glee with cymbals. In the 18th century, cymbals were not part of a normal European orchestra; everyone knew they came from the East, from the Ottoman Empire, whose janissary bands accompanied Turkish troops whenever they attacked Europeans. Gluck adds cymbals to his orchestra to inflame the xenophobic sentiments in his European audience, who are sympathizing with the Europeans in the story about to be slaughtered by barbarians from the East.
In the upcoming production opening Oct. 13, maestro Gary Thor Wedow. who made his debut in Seattle last February conducting "Julius Caesar" to great acclaim, will be interpreting Gluck's melodious masterpiece, supported by a great cast of singers headed by Nuccia Focile Italian soprano singing Iphigenia, who was in "Eugene Onegin" in 2002, and Canadian baritone Brett Polegato,, singing Orestes along with William Burden as Pylades, Phillip Joll (a good Welshman), and Michelle Losier, mezzo-soprano, making her Seattle Opera debut as Diana. Also appearing is David Adam Moore, a graduate of the Young Artist program, who debuted with the Seattle Opera in 2001.
Sets and costumes for this historic co-production with the Metropolitan Opera were created with the Seattle Opera Scenic Studios and the Seattle Opera Costume Shop. Not forgetting the great team of stage director Stephen Wadsworth, set designer Thomas Lynch, costume designer Martin Pakledinaz and fire designer and flight technical director Charles T. Buck.
Tickets are available by phone at 389-7676 or 1-800-426-1619, or in person at Seattle Opera Ticket Office, 1020 John St.
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