Gluck - Iphigenie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris): Boston Baroque - Premiere recording on period instruments

Christoph Willibald Gluck (Artist), Martin Pearlman (Artist), Christine Goerke (Artist), Rodney Gilfry (Artist), Boston Baroque (Artist), Vinson Cole (Artist), Sharon Baker (Artist), Iayne West (Artist), Stephen Salters (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 22, 2000)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Telarc
• ASIN: B00004WFLZ
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,439 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

Disc: 1

1. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Introduction and Chorus. Grands Dieux! soyez-nous secourables

2. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Recitative. Iphigénie, ô ciel!

3. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Chorus. Ô songe affreux! / Recitative. Ô race de Pélops

4. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Aria. Ô toi, qui prolongeas mes jours

5. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Chorus. Quand verrons-nous tarir nos pleurs?

6. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Recitative. Dieux! le malheur en tous lieux suit mes pas

7. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Aria. De noirs pressentiments

8. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Chorus. Les Dieux apaisent leur courroux / Recitative. Malheureuse! / Chorus. L

9. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Chorus. Il nous fallait du sang

10. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 1. Ballet

See all 24 tracks on this disc

Disc: 2

1. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Recitative. Je cède à vos désirs / Aria. D'une image, hélas!

2. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Recitative. Voici ces captifs malheureux

3. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Recitative. Ô joie inattendue!

4. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Trio. Je pourrais du tyran tromper la barbarie

5. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Recitative. Ô moment trop heureux!

6. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Duet. Et tu prétends encore que tu m'aimes? / Recitative. Quoi! je ne vaincrai

7. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Duet. Ah! mon ami

8. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Recitative. Malgré toi, je saurai t'arracher / Recitative. Quoi? toujours à mes

9. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Recitative. Puisque le Ciel à vos jours s'intéresse

10. Iphigénie en Tauride, opera in 4 acts, Wq. 46: Act 3. Aria. Divinité des grandes âmes

See all 18 tracks on this disc

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The most popular opera of Gluck might be Orfeo ed Euridice, but this one, Iphigénie en Tauride, is probably his most dramatically involving. It is about familial love and deep friendship and, as such, lacks the usual "love" music and interest. But the waters here run deep, and Martin Pearlman and his singers plumb those depths. Christine Goerke's Iphigénie is dignified, rich with expression and beautiful tone. Almost no less good is the Orestes of Rodney Gilfry, who uses his high baritone with intelligence and ease, singing tenderly when needed and explosively at other times. Vinson Cole brings grainy, expressive tenor to the role of Pylades firmly and effectively; and Stephen Salters, as the villainous Thaos, might sing coarsely, but it suits the character. Pearlman gets vivid, exciting playing from his period-instrument Boston Baroque and, on the second CD, offers a 28-minute, music-illustrated lecture after the close of the opera. The sound is luxurious and clear, and the singers' diction is superb. This set is a wonderful surprise--highly recommended. --Robert Levine

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is this a modern opera?, August 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Gluck - Iphigenie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris): Boston Baroque - Premiere recording on period instruments (Audio CD)

This is a terrific recording. Martin Perlman's tempos are wonderful and the orchestral playing is subtle but always clear. Christine Goerke is just stunning. Hearing a voice with this depth of color and size perform a "baroque" role as dramatically and artfully as this, is brilliant casting. Of special note is the recit and aria at the end of act one. The singing is especially nuanced in color throughout the dynamic range of this great voice. Rodney Gilfrey is an excellent Oreste. Especially in his arias---with sustained singing---his line is wonderful with a moving intense characterization. Vinson Cole is his usual wonderful self and never disappoints. Cole's and Gilfrey's voices are not a natural match---still, their duets are well executed and convey the message of the libretto. The rest of the singers are fine but are not the calibre of the principles. The recording itself is very clear with wonderful space around the voices and orchestra. Telarc---one of my favorite labels has exceeded its usual high standard. This recording should be a contender for a number of awards. For a "baroque" work----sure sounds pretty modern to me. This is well worth the investment. Last year's Grammy winner for best chorale recording---- a Britten War Requiem conducted by Robert Schaeffer also featuring Christine Goerke was recorded several years ago. This Iphigenie shows how this artist continues to mature in her ability to communicate compellingly with her remarkable voice. I hope there is more to come.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I defy the most insensitive person to be unmoved.", February 26, 2002

By 

Bob Zeidler (Charlton, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gluck - Iphigenie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris): Boston Baroque - Premiere recording on period instruments (Audio CD)

Dateline: Paris, 26 November, 1821. A career decision is made when an eighteen-year-old French student in Paris for the first time, to study for his degree in medicine, attends a performance revival of this Gluck masterpiece and writes home to his sister:

"Imagine, to begin with, an orchestra of eighty musicians who perform with such precision that you'd think it was a single instrument. The opera begins: you see far off a great plain (oh, the illusion is complete) and farther still a glimpse of the sea. A storm is heralded in the orchestra, dark clouds descend slowly and cover the plain; the stage is lit only by flickers of lightning piercing the clouds - but with a truthfulness and a perfection that have to be seen to be believed. There is silence for a moment, no actor on stage, the orchestra muttering, it's as if you can hear the wind sighing - you know, as you do when you're alone in winter and you hear the north wind moaning. [...] Then little by little the tension mounts and the storm bursts. Orestes and Pylades appear, in chains, brought by the barbarians of Tauris... It's more than one can stand. I defy the most insensitive person to be unmoved..."

That young pre-med student was none other than Hector Berlioz, and this Gluck masterpiece (in the opinion of many his greatest, if not his most popular, work) was to "inform" Berlioz (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Richard Wagner), in terms of directness and dramatic style, for the full length of Berlioz's career. Anyone familiar with the Berlioz skill at combining directness with dramatic impact can readily understand the effect the first hearing of this work had on this youth with unbounded imagination and a natural sense for drama. Needless to say, any plans Berlioz's father had for Hector to follow in the family tradition of medicine (or law) were demolished when he attended that 1821 performance. And music lovers are all the better off because of it.

Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714 - 1787), while German, was an "operatic citizen of Europe," and some of his greatest successes, at both their premieres and their revivals well into the 19th century, were in Paris, with French libretti, as is the case for "Iphiginie en Tauride." Overlapping the Baroque and early Classical periods, Gluck was to "reform" the opera style of the day by eliminating much of the florid ornamentation that was popular at the time and replacing it with a more direct declamatory style in which soloists, chorus and orchestra are fully integrated into an early form of "music drama" as would be practiced by Berlioz and Wagner the better part of a century later.

This 1779 masterpiece starts off with a bang, with a brief orchestral introduction (described far better by the young Berlioz, above, than I could ever do), and the dramatic tension is maintained throughout. Christine Goerke, as Iphigenie, could hardly be bettered; she infuses her role with emotion and drama, and can simply soar over the full ensemble when needed. And all the other soloists are equally fine, even if their roles are secondary to Iphigenie. The orchestra (here, forty rather than eighty instruments) and chorus provide splendid support, and the recording (made in the superb acoustics of Mechanics Hall, in Worcester, MA) are up to the usual Telarc standard.

One would hardly know, from the absolute freshness of the performance and from the style of writing that Gluck perfected for this work, that the work is now nearly 225 years old. Having heard this performance, I'm at a total loss to explain the fall-off in popularity of Gluck following the successes of the nineteenth-century revivals of his works which so affected Berlioz and Wagner.

If you hear no other Gluck opera, you should at least give this one a try. It's much more than a missing puzzle-piece to the story of music-drama development; it's downright thrilling!

Bob Zeidler

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Opera Novice Loves This Recording, March 19, 2001

By 

desefinado "desefinado" (Centennial, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gluck - Iphigenie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris): Boston Baroque - Premiere recording on period instruments (Audio CD)

I have a number of the better known operas which I enjoy for the music as opposed to the libretto. Although the liner notes indicate the simplicity of the music, I thought it was breathtaking. Apparently so did Berlioz according to the interesting commentary provided by Martin Pearlman. So if you are an opera novice, get this fabulous recording.