by Christoph Willibald Gluck
Directed by Robert Carsen
A Canadian Opera Company Presentation
at the Four Seasons Centre
Sept. 22, 25, 28, Oct. 1, 4, 7, 12, 15, 2011

            This production (co-owned by Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera,and Royal Opera House Covent Garden) is unquestionably one of the finest COC presentations. Gluck’s greatest opera, in a French libretto by Nicolas Francois Guillard (after Euripides and the tragedy by Claude Guimond de la Touche), uses sung dialogue accompanied by strings and other instruments, and the COC orchestra, under the baton of guest conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, is briskly and intensely expressive, showing how Gluck borrowed from his own earlier works but adapted his borrowings to accommodate abrupt shifts in volume, tone, and tempo. Drawn from a Greek legend, whose plot is the stuff of nightmare, the opera is a display of horror, its focus being the tensions and triumph of love in the presence of death. Iphigenia, who is ordered to kill a stranger as a sacrifice to the gods, discovers near the end that he is, in fact, her beloved and estranged brother, Orestes. In the original Greek legend, Iphigenia is herself sacrificed by her father, Agamemnon, to appease the gods, but Gluck turns her (Diana’s priestess) into a heroine who defies King Thoas of Scythia. Hers becomes the triumph of irrational love—“a love which we do not choose but which is imposed on us,” as Robert Carsen phrases it.

Carsen’s program notes indicate that this production takes us into the nightmare of Iphigenia’s “terrible emotional abyss.” To this effect, Tobias Hoheisel has given the production a stunning visual design, bleak, severe, and minimalist, that is essentially a large dark area with three huge black walls, a black floor, and no props. The ensemble inscribes the names of Iphigenia, Clytemnestra, and Agamemnon with white chalk on three walls, one name on each, and Orestes has his name inscribed on the floor. The setting seems claustrophobic even as it suggests a dynamic ambiguity, becoming a prison cell, altar, or tomb. The costumes are all black, with bare-footed women in dark brown wigs. Robert Carsen and Peter Van Praet share duties as lighting designers, and opt for black, blue, or coppery brown as dominant colours, with light breaking in only from small openings at two sides of the set. This black on black look pays dividends as far as mood and intensity are concerned—even blood looks black in this lighting—but it puts the four principals at a visual disadvantage because they have no distinctive colour to set them apart from anyone else on stage. Yet, so dynamic is the staging, so radiant the singing, and so accomplished the orchestra that this idiosyncratic visual choice shrinks somewhat in the production’s overall power.

Just as Gluck’s score indulges in some startling groupings, so does Carsen’s production that creates an infernal site where men brutalize women, where women strive desperately to clamber up walls and where they also have an opportunity to turn savagely on their oppressors. Iphigenia is first seen alone as she slowly advances downstage from the rear wall, her black shadow growing with each of her steps. Shadows, in fact, play an important dramatic role in this show, growing portentous or presaging danger or doom, most effectively shown in the scene where the shadow-tip of Iphigenia’s sword touches the real neck of her brother. They also advance the sense of nightmare and delirium. But it is Carsen’s stationings that are just as dramatically striking, for the director indicates individual isolation by stationing a character apart from a huddled group. Isolation also makes for silence, and sometimes this silence is terrible in its anticipation of some impending disaster or decisively violent action. In short, Carsen’s staging is a brilliant adaptation of Greek tragedy to opera in its high seriousness, unity of place, choric function (though the chorus actually sings from the pit in this production), and dramatic rhythm that points up the inevitability of Fate.

The singing is magnificent. Susan Graham’s Iphigenia has a secure, rich resonance with a strong linear intensity. Joseph Kaiser’s Pylades combines beauty of tone with special power, and Russell Braun’s Orestes has a heartfelt emotionality effectively expressed by his rich tones. Mark S.Doss’s King Thoas has fewer dimensions or colours than the other major roles do, but as a singer, he is confidently aggressive.

Rarely has an opera audience been so strong in its concentration as at this production, and when the three huge walls lift slowly off the floor to reveal blinding white light, the effect is visually and viscerally potent. This is a production not to be missed by any true opera lover.

pic 1: Susan Graham as Iphigenia (photo: John Currid)

pic 2: Russell Braun (Orestes) and Joseph Kaiser (Pylades) (photo: Michael Cooper)



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