Let’s Start With Some Q&A

Q. Is it Aulis or Aulide?

A. Aulis is Greek, Aulide is French. They are both gone now.

Q. Because, in the early versions of this write-up, you switched back and forth.

A. Yes. I settled on the French way, because that’s what Gluck used in his opera.

Q. Why did Iphigénie go there?

A. So her dad could kill her.

Q. Why did Dad want to kill his daughter?

A. So he could start the war against the Trojans.

Q. How could it possibly help, to have his daughter die?

A. Because Artemis (Diana, the goddess) was sad about her magic deer.

Q. Why so sad?

A. Iphigenia’s Dad had killed the magic deer.

Q. How did Mom get Iphigénie to go to Aulide, facing death?

A. Mom promised her that she was about to marry Achilles.

Q. How did Iphigénie escape this mess?

A. Everyone in the family, including Achilles, volunteered to die, and this made Artemis happy.

Q. Then what happened?

A. Iphigénie went to Tauride, and tried to kill her brother.

Q. Couldn’t Euripides think up a more relatable plotline than this?

A. Apparently not; the ancient Greeks were stuck with this sort of thing.

Q. Since Artemis was one of the gods, couldn’t she simply make a new magic deer?

A. That is all the time we have for questions.

The Old Stories Aren’t the Best Stories

Yes, that is a remarkably weird story, but we must remember that until Euripides published this in the 4th century BC, the Greeks had been reading Homer for 400 years. And if you have ever watched Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses to his Homeland, one of Homer’s stories, you will understand why the Greeks were so happy to read about Iphigenia and her near-fatal family problems, and the magic deer.

This is better, because all Ulysses really did is walk to his house – and it was a very long walk. Along the way, nobody required that Ulysses kill his daughter, and not much else happened, either. (Homer did, at times, write more engaging stories, but most of them are far too long for an opera. For reference, “Ulysses walking home” takes about 3 hours in most productions, so you can see the problem.)

Let’s just be grateful for the high drama of Iphigénie, and disregard the fact that her story is complete nonsense. It would be more than 2,000 years until Mozart came up with The Magic Flute, a far more interesting and complex story. Although, of course, that story is largely unrelatable nonsense, too. Both odd stories are set to excellent music, though. For some genuine page-turners, check out Tchaikovsky.

How Does C. W. Gluck Fit In?

In the mid-1700’s, time-lined between Handel and Mozart, Christoph Willibald Gluck wrote more 40 operas, starting in Italian and moving to French. (Gluck spoke German, or Czech.) Among the dozens of operas about Orpheus and Euridice, composed repeatedly over the centuries, the one Gluck offered in 1762 is probably the most well-known.

Gluck took a shot at re-writing Handel’s duds Poro and Ezio, and he tried his hand at operas with more familiar names, including Il Re Pastore, Semiramide, Armida, and La Clemenza di Tito, all of which were overshadowed by later composers.

(Note: It appears that we are still without a handy listing of opera names/subjects, cross-referenced with all the various composers who worked with that topic. Let’s please prioritize that for a future date, perhaps when someone has a long-term TV screen failure, or is immobilized with their foot in a cast – something!)

A great deal has been written about Gluck’s influence on how standards in opera changed during the 1700’s. In this way, he is like the composer Giovanni Pergolesi. (Those transitions are another topic worth prioritizing, for an exposition beyond the quick Wikipedia references).

Moving along through his varied and voluminous output, in 1774 he gave us Iphigénie en Aulide, and then after another five years, Iphigénie en Tauride. Both were in French, and both came from that master storyteller, Euripides.

Thanks Amsterdam; We Almost Missed This One

Iphigénie en Aulide is not frequently performed. In 2011, however, Amsterdam produced both of Gluck’s Iphigénies, and you can find them on Medici.tv.

The production is quite unusual, in that I could never figure out the floor plan of the “Amsterdam Music Theatre”, because the camera’s always looking across the stage, past the singers, at the distant conductor and orchestra – as well as part of the audience over there. Fine, but while the singers are facing us (most of the time), who’s watching the conductor? Only the performers approaching across a narrow gangplank, which cuts straight through the orchestra. Okay; whatever.

For Aulide, one set does the trick. There is a huge imposing staircase on the left, and a matching one on the right, and that’s it. Very effective.

Waking Up with Gluck and Haydn

From the start, you can hear that you are in the 18th century – this music has the repetition, and even in many places the monotony, of Handel.

But quite soon, I sensed more energy than anything baroque; the style in the 1770’s was moving noticeably toward the vivacious bounce of Mozart, and it didn’t take many minutes in Act 1 for Gluck to come up with a powerful male/female chorus.

Best of all, this thing has no harpsichord. I checked the score, and it’s gone.

Good news! Gluck (along with Haydn) are here to move me out of the ancient doldrums of early opera!

Here We Go With the Wacky Plot

In Act 1, it is important to pause frequently and use some other reference, to figure out what in the world all these people (and the goddess) are doing. The librettist, one François-Louis Gand Le Bland Du Roullet, doesn’t give us much to work with, if we are struggling with the details of plot development. (He scripted Alceste for Gluck a couple years later, but that was all.)

But the short story is, we are seeing Artemis making morbid demands on the king, Agamemnon, and him wringing his hands trying to decide whether or not to kill his daughter. Mom (the famous Clytemnestra) is all in for the marriage of Iphigénie and young Achilles, but it appears that she may not understand that there’s going to be a knife at the altar, not a ring. It all gets worked out, but again, this story line isn’t the main point.

A Treasury of Songs

What is the main point is how Gluck scores big with another mixed chorus, an excellent tenor/soprano duet in Act 1, and then a female chorus which is so remarkable that it is worth replaying, and even worth finding on YouTube. It is called “Rest Assured, Lovely Princess” (or “Rassurez-vous Belle Princesse”), and if that isn’t one of the greatest songs composed in the 1700’s, I need to hear the competition. It is outstanding.

Iphigénie responds with her own soprano solo, also appealing, and I guess she’s on board for the wedding even though her dad is a little nervous about what’s going to happen when they get to the church in Aulide. There’s a large regal chorus piece in there for the king, worth hearing, although we see that Agamemnon isn’t fully committed to the “daddy’s girl” trope; he’s going to do “thumbs up” to the knife man standing next to Iphigénie, so Artemis will be appeased, and he can go win his war.

Getting Pretty Dark Here, Euripides

Gradually, everyone becomes aware of the plan to sacrifice Iphigénie to Artemis, and one by one, all of them step forward to try to take her place.  Yes, even King Ag is willing to die – I guess then, someone else will lead the successful attack on Troy.

But Iphigénie overrules them all, and says she’s so devoted to her country, or her father, or Artemis, that she’s good with the original sacrifice plan. (She shows up singing, in this production, wearing a dynamite belt wired to a switch, I think. Doesn’t totally make sense. Who has the switch? Why is the priest still brandishing his big knife?)

How About a Concert Production?

What carries the show, again, is the music and the singing. Everyone in the cast steps up with solid solos or duets, as they make their cases in favor of their own deaths. These pieces are regularly interspersed with more from the very prominent chorus. They wind up the arguments with a powerful trio which, to me, sounds like something Beethoven wrote into his Sixth (but that came 30 years later).

Iphigénie’s convincing solo of submission is another knockout piece, thank you Christoph Willibald. This one, rather like a lullaby, is called “It is my destiny” or “Il faut, de mon destin”, and it’s also available right there on YouTube.

Here’s another: she sings a wonderful goodbye song to Achilles, “Farewell, keep me in your soul” or “Adieu, conservez dans votre âme". She even sings about her concern for her brother, which is ironic, given what happens to those two later, in Tauride, but that is another opera.

Since the music is such a high point in Aulide, one might consider a concert presentation of this opera. Not that it’s difficult to stage – most of them just stand there anyway – but for some of us, trying to understand the story and the blocking feels like a distraction from the remarkable series of melodic pieces. Maybe that’s all we need.

Happy Ending, Sad Ending – Doesn’t Really Matter

All these remarkable songs from Gluck, and the creditable poetry from the fellow with the long name, make a good impression on the goddess Artemis. She shows up and finally announces that everyone’s show of piety and duty has convinced her to forget about her dead deer, so all are free to go. It ends with a triumphal hymn, a happy ending, and the young lovers make their escape from Aulide.

(In other versions of this story, she does not escape at all, but they still don’t use dynamite, just the knife.)

I gather that even the evil king, Agamemnon, is let off at this point, but I cannot see the justice of that, and neither can Achilles. That king flip-flopped a lot, but he really did intend to step up and appease Artemis by killing his daughter, so there must be some bad blood there for the future. (In fact, some say that the king’s wife was so upset with Agamemnon’s cruel plan that she runs off with a guy named Aegisthus. That, I could believe.)

Obviously, the story is interesting, like all puzzles are, but the heavy lifting here is done by the composer. The important discovery for me is the extremely pleasant music of Gluck, so I’ll have to re-watch Tauride and Orpheo, because it has been a long time. There’s even an Alceste here on Medici with English titles for me, though that’s the only option --  it seems to be as rare on video as Iphigénie in Aulide.