Customer Reviews

Christoph Williabald Gluck - Iphigenie en Tauride / Galstian, Gilfry, van der Walt, Christie, Guth (Opernhaus Zurich)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Iphigenie en Tauride is a great opera by a great composer, so it is nice to finally have a production available on DVD. Is this an ideal production? Probably not. I had never seen the work produced onstage before watching this, but based on my limited exposure to the opera, this DVD works beter on audio terms than on visual ones.

Gluck's operas come between Handel's and Mozart's, they form a bridge between baroque and classical. In the development of opera as an art form Gluck was a very important figure. He took opera seria and made it more direct, more visceral, more dramatic, trimming many of the frills associated with the genre so that the result is something compact, intensified, emotionally engaging(similar to what Verdi accomplished with bel canto). Iphigenie en Tauride might just be the epitome of this approach. Typical of opera seria, there isn't much action...most of the key events have already happened offstage, before the opera begins, leaving the characters to dwell on their personal crises and emotional conflicts that result from said events. Despite all this, Iphigenie is a swiftly paced opera, it doesn't crawl, it MOVES, and this is a result of Gluck's galvanized score, driving the characters and story toward the denouement in a minimal amount of time(the running time on this disc is under two hours) but with a high level of energy. Brilliant writing on the composer's part. No doubt Gluck played an influential role in the young Mozart's development in producing music that was equally mobile and consuming.

The audio portion of this disc is virtually flawless. All the singers are in fine voice. Juliette Galstian and Rodney Gilfry, the two leads, sing in a manner that is powerful, intensely dramatic, larger than life. They really pour themselves into the turmoil of their characters, as a result they dominate both the music and the viewer's attention. Zurich Opera's Orchestra La Scintilla, under the direction of William Christie, a specialist in this kind of music, gives a scintillating performance(appropriately enough for an orchestra bearing that name) that is not for the faint of heart, constantly pushing the drama forward. My only complaint with the sound is that there is some distortion at some points, usually when Galstian pushes the high notes with maximum force.

The visual portion doesn't fare nearly as well. By that, I don't mean to undermine the attractiveness of the singers, not by any means. Galstian is gorgeous, and the dashing Gilfry could easily pass for Brad Pitt's identical twin; it isn't hard to see why he is so popular in studly roles such as Don Giovanni and Billy Budd. No, my complaints rest with the production. I don't oppose modern productions as a rule, particularly when they are attached to more familiar works, but I have a problem when they serve no purpose other than to confuse the narrative and muddle the themes. The story takes place in ancient Greece, in fact it covers some of the same characters and events as Strauss' Elektra. Placing Iphigenie, Orestes and the rest in more contemporary dress, and having them flit about in surreal-looking drawing rooms fogs the viewer's understanding of what is actually going on. As for the giant-headed characters constantly shuffling around in the background, reenacting key events(usually of a violent nature) like some kind of mute Greek chorus...they are interesting to watch at first, even somewhat effective, but increased exposure reduces their impact to one of silliness. Overall, many of the backdrops are visually striking, they simply add nothing to the drama, if anything they make it more opaque.

Because of the wonderful music, and because this is the only version of the opera available on DVD, I give it a high recommendation. Regarding the production, however, seeing as how this was my first visual exposure to Iphigenie, I would have preferred a more traditional approach.

I would like to second the opinion of reviewer "jswell". I'm a great fan of Gluck and would also affirm the opinions of reviewer "C. Boerger" as to his significance in the history of opera. That said, I cannot praise enough this intense, rapidly moving production of Iphigenie en Tauride. I think the pantomimes on stage are in effect as important as the witches and ghost in Macbeth. They markedly add to the drama. Great production!

The Kultur version only has DD 2.0 sound while the ArtHaus version gives you the choice of PCM Stereo, DD 5.1, and DTS 5.1. The latter also has an hour long documentary, "Gluck the Reformer", which is one of the best extras I've seen on an opera DVD. On it, conductors William Christie and John Eliot Gardiner explain just what Gluck was reforming, director Claus Guth explains what was going on with the masked shadows, and the three principal singers explain further aspects of the story line. This version is available from many sources, like the UK Amazon.

In the US, in order to play the ArtHaus version, you will need to buy an all region DVD player that converts PAL to NTSC. You should have one on hand, in any case, for other DVDs that are only available in non US formats. Philips DVP5140 Multiformat DVD Player with DivX, MP3, Windows Media Support is inexpensive and does the job quite well. The reviews give information on how it can easily be made region free.

... or should always come first in opera productions, right? Naturally I would say so, since I'm a musician myself. But if you read the reviews of opera productions, not just here in the amazoo but in the trade publications and newspapers, you'll soon notice that staging, costuming, and dramaturgy provoke more intense reactions from opera fans than the music. And that's a weird paradox! There are many more operas in the active repertoire with great music and lame librettos than the converse. Christoph Willibald Gluck's "Iphegenie en Tauride" is not an example of that imbalance; both the music and the drama rank near the top of the repertoire, close to the fundamental ideal of opera as the most affective synthesis of music, language, and visual artistry.

This 2001 production by Opernhaus Zürich, conducted by William Christie, unquestionably put musical values first. Christie extracts every scintilla of musicality from his small 'La Scintilla' chamber orchestra; the instrumental balance within the ensemble is superbly transparent and elegant, and the balance between the orchestra and the singers on this DVD is marvelous, in that the vocal lines don't separate from the instrumental lines like a curdled Hollandaise sauce. I detest recordings on which the voices and the orchestra don't meld into a musical whole. Christie's tempi are thoroughly 'informed' by the musical manners of the 18th Century; they're brightly varied, always expressive, and always as elegant as Parisian audiences of the1770s would have demanded. Singers Rodney Gilfry and Deon van der Walt are gloriously paired as Orestes and Pylades, both with rich robust voices yet with the restraint and polish the music requires. Juliette Galstain, as Iphegenie, has perhaps a bit more 'restraint and polish' than most listeners would insist upon, but her tuning is faultless and her voice blends effectively into the orchestral ensemble. She is, in effect, one of the instruments of the composition.

There are some nits to be picked with the staging, however. It's highly stylized and mannered -- and that's almost certainly what would have been true in Paris in 1773 also -- and it's plainly intended to be psychologically symbolic, with a bed for an altar and with huge-headed puppets shadowing the singers to reveal their inner turmoil. On the live stage -- yes, I was there -- the puppets and the choreographed gestures of the chorists seemed authentically in the spirit of the libretto even while they recast the 'meanings' of the drama in 21st Century motivations. In this filmed version of the performance, however, such paraphernalia tends to jump into the foreground and become distracting. Indeed the film editing is willfully in conflict with the on-stage dramaturgy, often zooming in at the wrong moment on the wrong object or face. There are far too many movie-like close-ups. That's not so much a problem when the close-ups catch the potent facial 'gestures' of Rodney Gilfry as Orestes. Juliette Galstain is another matter. Seen from a seat in the opera house, her body movements were convincingly expressive, but seen in a camera close-up, her face is utterly inexpressive. Frankly, she has no control of her facial affect; she'a a singer, not an actress, and the DVD director Thoams Grimm should have realized her limitations and edited his film accordingly. One wonders if stage director Claus Guth and film director Grimm ever met.

The climactic appearance of the Goddess Diana, the 'dea ex machina' of the opera, is as feeble in the film as it was on stage. We hear the voice of the Goddess seemingly from the Heavens, but we see only a thin girl child stroll across the stage and touch hands with the reunited siblings Iphigenie and Orestes. For once some stage machinery al la Cirque de Soleil was needed, and such stagecraft was available in Gluck's era. But these are the sort of shortcomings that one is free to disregard when the musical values are sustained, when the music is so well-performed that one scarcely notices the staging.

I've had this DVD in hand for some years without reviewing it, for various reasons. A few days ago, however, I attended a simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera's current production of this opera, in a movie theater with a huge screen and oodles of surround-sound speakers. The Met production starred Susan Graham, Placido Domingo, and Paul Graves in the three principal roles. it was essentially Gluck as 19th C 'verismo', with sets, costumes, and musical manners closer to Verdi or Wagner than to a composer born eighteen years BEFORE Haydn! Strange to say, Gluck makes fairly good Wagner, when the tempi are slow and portentous, when all the subtle shifts of rhythmic phrasing are understated or ignored, when the orchestra is subordinated to and overawed by the vocal lines. In this production, the staging is so dramatic that one scarcely notices the music. Honestly, nevertheless, I can imagine that a lot of opera-goers in 2011 CE might warmly prefer the Met's Grand Opera pomp to Zürich's grace and elegance. I happen not to be one. I heard the musical values of Gluck's opera shabbily submerged in this "historically disinformed" performance.

Gluck's music has been overshadowed by Gluck's perceived role in the history of music, that is, as the 'reformer' of the excessively ornamental virtuosity of Baroque operatic composition. That perception is a bit of a musicologist's mythification. Gluck was a composer of his era; although he was a German by birth, his better-known operas were firmly based in the French tradition of Rameau rather than the Italian tradition of Handel. Modern opera-goers are so little acquainted with French Baroque that Gluck's music seems more distinctively non-baroque than it truly was. Besides, the virtuosic flamboyance of Italian opera scarcely vanished with the arrival of Gluck! It survived and flourished in some of the operas of Mozart, Paisiello, Cherubini, and especially of Rossini.

Iphigenie's oracular dream is a significant element of the first act of this opera, and oracular dreams were prominent in many of the classic Greek dramas from which Baroque composers took their plots for librettos. I wonder if poor Gluck suffered from a recurrent oracular nightmare, in which he found himself figuring as a harbinger of Wagner.

Most of the reviews concerning this "abstract" production are from opera fans who never saw this opera. I did, in a similar "abstract" production at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and it turned out to be one of the most remarkable operas I and my friends had ever seen. Trust me, you would not enjoy this opera with everyone standing statically in their Greek robes. The singers, all of them are world-class. One of the best DVD operas available. Sung in the original French, the diction is so clear, I hardly needed the subtitles.

And, the subtitles in English only, are very easy to read.

I am unfortunately one of those people that never saw the live performance. Seeing something live helps you appreciate the most minimal staging. So I have nothing to compare and found this an obstruction when concentrating on the music and the story.

Based on a play" Iphigenia in Tauris" by Greek dramatist Euripides this presentation in four acts was composed by Christoph Willibald von Gluck (July 2, 1714 - November 15, 1787).

Even if this is your first foray into the presentation it would be good to know a little bit of the background so you he would have an idea of what the people are trying to say or do. It's very difficult with this particular staging to just dive right in and understand what is going on.

At the beginning of the Trojan War the goddess Diane had turned the wins against Agamemnon. To satisfy the goddess Diane Agamemnon had to sacrifice his daughter Iphigénie. However Diane saved Iphigénie and delivered her to Tauride, where Iphigénie served the enemy Scythians as Diane's high priestess. The first act is 15 years after the incident and takes place during a storm that battered Diane's temple at Tauride.

You can look up the details ahead of time and then follow the presentation. I have to admit I needed the English subtitles. Maybe later I will not need them.

I discovered this DVD in the library by accident when I took a course in music appreciation and had to watch an opera. Reluctantly I watched it, studied it to understand what was going on and eventually I watched it five times, each time getting more out of it each time. The music and the performances of the actors are really moving, and the bizarre use of the masks is fascinating. I especially was moved by the passionate struggle between the two tenors over who should be executed. It is truly an amazing performance. I may hate opera in general, but I watch this one over and over again.

The new Met production of Iphigenie, featuring Susan Graham, was reviewed in the 11/29/07 New York Times by Anthony Tommasini, who raves about Graham's singing and the overall musical direction. Amazon also offers a Mozarteum audio CD version featuring Graham and Thomas Hampson. The Mozarteum's stage production, from the cover photo, appears related to the Met's as described by Tommasini. With Graham, Hampson and 5 Amazon stars the Mozarteum audio version may be a reasonable alternative to Christie's musically good but visually distracting effort. I've put the CD in my shopping cart.

It's quirky that different search results come up depending on whether one tells Amazon to look for Iphigenie or Iphegenie. Both produce hits, but different ones!

This production is ludicrous. The tempi are wrong, the chorus is too small, but mostly the production is so bad as to make Sellars seem insightful. The concept of masks, etc, is annoying, distracting and utterly assinine.