He was as a lot a vessel as an originator of the nice change. “There have been many individuals engaged on naturalizing the prevailing types, and kind of domesticating them,” Stephen Wadsworth, who directed “Iphigénie en Tauride” on the Metropolitan Opera in 2007, mentioned in an interview. Different opera composers, writers and impresarios across the identical time have been in search of larger simplicity, simpler melodies, the merging of arias into the encompassing recitatives (sung dialogues), a extra reasonable performing type and fewer subservience to singers.
Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Euridice” (1762) was the fruits of those efforts, ushering in his trademark type. His librettist, Ranieri de Calzabigi, pressed him towards an natural union of phrases and music; the title function was sung by the castrato Gaetano Guadagni, who had labored with the English actor David Garrick, a pioneer of onstage naturalism.
“Alceste” premiered in 1767, and when the rating was revealed two years later, Gluck’s preface set out his inventive credo, calling for an finish to regular marches of da capo arias in favor of an unfurling drama, with fluidity by way of arias, recitatives and dance sequences, and a refrain that took a extra important half within the motion. Supple and clear declamation dominated the scores: “All the time as easy and pure as attainable,” Gluck wrote.
“Iphigénie en Aulide,” his first opera written for Paris, was rehearsed for six months. (Simplicity is enormously difficult to realize.) Controversy broke out over Gluck’s experiment, sufficient that Leopold Mozart warned his 22-year-old son, the already well-known Wolfgang Amadeus, towards alienating any of the cultural elite by taking sides.
However Mozart made his selection clear: His masterly “Idomeneo” (1781) would quote Gluck in tribute. He was among the many first composers to soak up Gluckian classes — and was adopted by pathbreaking giants like Cherubini, Beethoven, Spontini, Berlioz, Meyerbeer and Wagner.
“Iphigénie en Aulide” was sufficient of successful to encourage “Iphigénie en Tauride,” a form of sequel — and in addition a maturation. There are extra aria-like passages within the second opera, however their placement is extra surprising, and extra attentive to the drama. At Aix, Haïm’s muscular conducting introduced their types nearer collectively, enjoying down the nostalgic courtliness in “Aulide” that may make it a much less fiery, elemental drama than “Tauride.”
