The mythology based on the House of Atreus has been the source of infinitely many works in European culture, and opera is not an exception. While the most famous example remains Elektra by Richard Strauss, Iphigénie en Tauride, by Christoph Willibald Gluck, is based on one of the last episodes of that saga, as told by Euripides in his tragedy. To understand the plot, we need to know the whole story, and director Andreas Homoki shows us the previous events, acted out in pantomime during the first aria and chorus, where Iphigénie and the other priestesses comment on the terrible ongoing storm.
We see Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia in order to appease the gods and guarantee a successful war campaign in Troy. His wife Clytemnestra kills him at his return from the war, aided by her lover. Orestes, the only son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, avenges his father, murdering his own mother. But Iphigenia was not dead: she was saved at the last moment by the goddess Artemis (Diana), and transported in Tauris, in modern Crimea, to serve as a priestess.
In this primitive land, in Homoki's vision, everything is black. The stage is a black funnel, with a warped perspective, almost invisible in its blackness; its shape becomes apparent when it breaks, in sharp-edged, garish, wildly jagged cracks – like bolts of lightning – that let in a blinding white light, only to close again quickly. Iphigénie and the other priestesses, as well as the Taurians are clad in total black, complete with gloves and veils, for the women, while the men are blindfolded. It is a psychological interpretation: Iphigénie’s exile becomes internalised, the black prison is inside her, in her birth, in her inability to escape the orgy of blood running through her family.
Cecilia Bartoli gave a strong, emotional interpretation of Iphigénie. In this opera, written in 1779, Gluck completed his musical evolution, abandoning the strict forms of Baroque opera for a more open, modern style. The arias are still in A-B-A form, but all the recitatives are accompagnato, with the whole orchestra, and the continuo is gone. The dazzling coloratura of only a few decades before is discarded in favour of a more emotional lyricism, made of simpler melodies and large phrases. Bartoli sang Iphigénie relying on her beautiful legato, with a perfect style larmoyant, exhibiting amazing breath technique, and heart-breaking pianissimi. Engulfed in a sort of burqa, with stylised movements, she resorted to her legendary facial expressions to convey the deep, contrasting emotion of the priestess.