Iphigénie en Tauride
The drama is ultimately based on the play Iphigenia in Tauris by the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides which deals with stories concerning the family of Agamemnon in the aftermath of the Trojan War.
Some think that the head of the Paris Opéra, Devismes, had attempted to stoke up the rivalry between Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni, an Italian composer also resident in the French capital, by asking them both to set an opera on the subject of Iphigenia in Tauris.
[1] In 1781 Gluck produced a German version of the opera, Iphigenia in Tauris, for the visit of the Russian Grand Duke Paul to Vienna, with the libretto translated and adapted by Johann Baptist von Alxinger in collaboration with the composer.
Styled "a tragic Singspiel", it was staged on 23 October 1781 at the Nationalhoftheater,[5] as the emperor Joseph II had had the Burgtheater renamed after dismissing the Italian singers and their orchestra in 1776 and installing German actors in the theatre.
[9] The German edition was revived in Berlin at the former Königliches Nationaltheater in the Gendarmenmarkt on 24 February 1795,[10] while Da Ponte's translation was chosen for the London first performance at the King's Theatre on 7 April 1796.
[14] In 1889 Richard Strauss made a new German arrangement of the work for the publisher Adolph Fürstner, which was later staged in Weimar at the Hoftheater on 9 June 1900, under the Goethe-inspired title of Iphigenie auf Tauris.
[15] As for the Da Ponte Italian version,[18] there was a "memorable" staging at the Teatro alla Scala in 1957, with Nino Sanzogno conducting the orchestra, Luchino Visconti as the director and Maria Callas in the title role.
Iphigenia, sister of Orestes, is the high priestess of Diana in the temple of Tauris, having been transported there magically by the goddess when her father Agamemnon attempted to offer her as a sacrifice.
A chorus of Scythians comes bringing news of two young Greeks who have just been found shipwrecked, demanding their blood (Il nous fallait du sang).
Orestes berates himself for causing the death of his dear friend (Dieux qui me poursuivez), but Pylades assures him that he does not feel dispirited because they will die united (Unis dès la plus tendre enfance).
She tells Orestes and Pylades she can persuade Thoas to save one of them from the sacrifice (Je pourrais du tyran tromper la barbarie) and asks the one who is spared to carry word of her fate to her sister Electra in Argos.
As Diana is carried back into the clouds, everyone sings a concluding chorus of rejoicing at having the favor of earth and heaven restored to them (Les dieux, longtemps en courroux).
However, the most important as far as Gluck is concerned – because it formed the basis of Guillard's libretto – is Guimond de la Touche's spoken tragedy, which premiered in Paris on 4 June 1757.
Beginning work in 1778, Gluck collaborated closely with the young poet Nicolas-François Guillard, who based his libretto on Guimond de la Touche's play.
[30] This was so out of the ordinary that, after the first five performances, with Gluck's acquiescence, the authorities of the Paris Opéra added ballet music by François-Joseph Gossec to the finale, with Jean-Georges Noverre's choreography.
[32] Which was commented upon as follows in the Journal de Paris: The public’s fondness for the superior talent of the principal dancers has inspired, for the end of this tragedy, a ballet which was a sort of continuation thereof.
The tunes seemed well suited to the ways of the two united peoples.The opera contains "Gluck's most famous piece of psychological instrumentation",[30] "Le calme rentre dans mon cœur".
As Donald Grout describes it: "Orestes, left alone after Pylades has been arrested by the temple guards, falls into a half stupor; in pitiable self-delusion he tries to encourage the feeling of peace that descends on him momentarily, singing Le calme rentre dans mon cœur.
But the accompaniment, with a subdued, agitated, sixteenth-note reiteration of one tone, and with a sforzando accent at the first beat of every measure, betrays the troubled state of his mind, from which he cannot banish the pangs of remorse for his past crime.
It is perhaps the first occurrence in opera of this device of using the orchestra to reveal the inward truth of a situation, in distinction from, even in contradiction to, the words of the text – a practice that Richard Wagner was later to incorporate into a complete system.
