Iphigénie en Tauride

Iphigenie en Tauride had it’s UK premiere in 1796 but this is the ENO’s first staging. It is a darkly dramatic opera, based on a Euripides story in which the Gods play as important a role as the humans, although mostly off-stage. It opens indeed with the gods violently reacting to two Greek men washed up on the Scythian shores, and demanding, as due, their death on arrival. Cymbals clash, lights flash and it seems we are in for much noise and no gentleness or love.

However this turns out be a first false impression. The story turns round Iphigenie, about to be sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon, but secretly saved by the god Helen and for the last twenty years serving as a high priestess with other Greek outcast ladies. Unfortunately, her job includes sacrificing unwanted visitors, like the newly arrived Greeks. This all-important role is sung by the superb Christine Rice, a mezzo-soprano, who manages to rise to great dramatic heights as well as conveying more personal tragedy.

It is indeed the personal tragedy which gradually takes over the opera as she bewails the loss of her younger brother, Orestes. What she doesn’t know is that Orestes, sung movingly by baritone Jaques Imbrailo, is her long-lost brother. Gradually, we learn, that after Iphigenia was apparently sacrificed by her father, her mother Clytemnestra kills him in retaliation. At which point Orestes kills his mother, for which we see him now suffering the tortures of remorse. All this is the gods’ work.

As we learn more, the tone of the opera changes and moves into periods of great melodic beauty. Orestes talks to his boyhood friend, Pylade, sung sweetly by tenor, Nick Pritchard, and, when Iphigenie decides that she can arrange freedom for one of the men, insists on offering himself.

The strength of the production is not supported by any sets to speak of. Lighting, colour, shadow, and a few props is all we get. Although this may arise from cost cutting exercises, in fact it works very well, focusing on the strength of the characters, while allowing the priestesses in sweeping bronze-coloured robes, to make willowy patterns on the stage. Set and costume designer, Soutra Gilmore, can be credited for this brave decision.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the opera is the ending – a happy one, explained by the eighteenth convention which expected such a resolution, however unlikely. In fact, such is the care given to the central relationship between brother and sister that it comes as a relief, if not entirely convincing. But perhaps opera can arise above such minor caveats.

The ENO’s admirable orchestra, under David Bates, manages the transition from roar and thunder to meditation and understanding with total conviction. Although the present run is not long, it is to be hoped that the ENO will keep it in the repertory and give more people the chance to see this powerful, and not often seen, masterpiece in the story of opera.

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Composer: Christophe Willibald Gluck
Librettist: Nicolas Francois Guillard
Director: Lyndsey Turner
Conductor: David Bates

Photo credit: Helen Murray