Iphigénie en Tauride

Iphigénie en Tauride, Royal Opera House, London
By Andrew Clark
Published: September 11 2007 17:52 Last updated: September 11 2007 17:52
One problem faces all Gluck interpreters: how do you extract the meat from the marble? It explains why we encounter his masterpieces so rarely, and why Monday’s performance of Iphigénie en Tauride – the first at Covent Garden for 35 years – was so uninvolving. Despite its tragic depths, its melodic abundance and dramatic variety, the work’s austerity is forbidding. Like a monument, Iphigénie has its weights and balances: heroic but intimate, grandly tragic without being frigid or marmoreal, weighty yet swift in its storytelling.