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Review: Review: Iphigénie en Tauride (Pinchgut Opera)

Why, oh why is Gluck’s Ipigénie en Tauride still a relative rarity on the stage? In his late, post-reform operas, the German Classical composer and noted Francophile achieved an almost unmatched marriage of text with music – an emotional ‘rightness’ that alas went the way of all flesh once the brassy bel canto of Rossini and co. took over in the 19th century. Perhaps its modest lack of showiness works against it – there are no da capos here, no flashy vocalisations on display. Gluck can be a slowburn composer, his sublimities revealing themselves on further hearings rather than smacking you between the eyes first time round. And it is, after all, Greek drama in its purist form – no romantic entanglements, no mad scene, no laughs – just a searing human drama of almost domestic proportions. In his adaptation of one of Euripides’ most potent masterpieces, Gluck was able to dish out hope, grief, despair and that oh-so-crucial cathartic relief of the happy ending in two hours of intense, introspective suffering. Hardly box-office, then, to offer up to today’s sensation-craving “where are the crackers?” opera on the harbour crowd. Fortunately, Lindy Hume, in her handsome classically proportioned production for…

December 4, 2014