Gluck - Iphigénie en Tauride (Paris, 2021)

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Iphigénie en Tauride

Opéra National de Paris, 2021

Thomas Hengelbrock, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Tara Erraught, Jarrett Ott, Julien Behr, Jean-François Lapointe, Marianne Croux, Jeanne Ireland, Christophe Gay, Agata Buzek

Palais Garnier, Paris - 26 September 2021 

The essence of what is continually great and everlasting in the later works of Christoph Willibald Gluck is that despite the formality of the 18th century musical conventions and the poetic licence of contemporary adaptation, he manages to make the stories and predicaments of the great mythological figures of Greek drama feel completely human. Despite appearing to have a very limited idea for presenting the drama, Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski's production of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride nonetheless similarly strives to find the underlying humanity in his production for the Paris Opera, and perhaps even delve deeper into the mindsets and troubled history of the Atreides family. The success of the production is mainly down to Gluck of course, but Warlikowski knows when to defer to genius.

Essentially, the Orestia deals with the downfall of a great family, a royal family, and assuming that they aren't really lizard people - something I'm prepared to keep an open mind about - even royal families are human too. Hmm. Anyway. Warlikowski has been here before - or rather later - with his Princess Diana influenced production of Alceste, and this production of Iphigénie en Tauride which was first produced in Paris in 2006, opens somewhat obscurely with a title 'Dedicated to Queen Marie Antoinette'. Other than it being about a royal family and it being produced for Paris, I'm not sure what the intention of that is, but it doesn't prove to have any real bearing on the rest of the production.

Warlikowski's setting for Iphigénie en Tauride is, well, it looks very much like most Warlikowski sets designed by Malgorzata Szczesniak, with glass panels, mirrored rooms, a wall of showers on one side and a wall of sinks on the other. Here Tauride is an old people's home where Iphigenia as an old woman in a gold lamé dress looks back at the defining incident in her experience of a troubled family life. Or not so much looks back on it of course as much as relives it, her mind failing, flitting between her current infirmity and mental state in old age and the incident on Tauride that may have helped reduce her to her condition.

This Tauride or old people's home is of course less a physical place than a state of mind, and it's the impact that her experience has on her mind that Warlikowski wants to explore. Within that however, the actual drama plays out much as you would expect, with Orestes and Pylades brought by the priestesses as strangers to be sacrificed at the paranoid King Thoades, who while trying his best not to fall victim to the fate an oracle has decreed for him, inevitably ends up bringing it about.

Warlikowski illustrates a few scenes behind the reflective shield of her mind, showing the now and the past, but it's fragmented and nightmarish in its visualisation and not a narrative illustration. Doubles are used, as they often are in productions of this work  which seems open to such divisions and analysis, (Lukas Hemleb, Geneva 2015), (Claus Guth, Zurich, 2001) More than just use an actor to double Iphigénie past and present, internal and external, the director also doubles or contrasts the past as a mirror of the present. What plays out simultaneously is a kind of shadow nightmare scenario of her experience in Aulide, where it's now Iphigenia the priestess who is to carry out the human sacrifice, with Thoas becoming her surrogate father.

The psychoanalytical approach is quite appropriate, the dysfunctional family issues compounded with Iphigenia's encounter with the stranger who is her brother Orestes, and in Orestes seeing in Iphigenia the image of the mother he has just murdered. It's inevitable then that the familiar influence of the films of David Lynch also plays a part in this Warlikowski production, with scenes and imagery reminiscent of Wild at Heart (another horrific family saga of murder and brutality) and Mulholland Drive (a glamorous life on the surface with hidden horrors surfacing in the moment of death). Mix in a bit of royal scandal and there's plenty to make this visually impressive and troubling while still largely leaving the drama to tell its own tale.

Here, as is often the case, the best a director can do is find a suitable setting for mood and let Gluck's music and the drama speak for itself. Warlikowski does a little more than this, finding a way to bring the audience into the human drama that is playing out in the mind of Iphigenia. There are a few other touches, having the chorus and other players in the Tauride drama placed in the boxes, isolated and pushed off to the sidelines away from the wholly personal interiorised nature of Iphigenia's relationship with the drama. Diana's appearance at the end of Act 4 is appropriately sung from the back of the Palais Garnier up in the gods, all contributing to present as immersive a presence as possible of the drama replaying out in her mind.

Evidently it's Gluck's beautiful music, his attunement to the drama and the understated emotional states that drive the drama forward and it was successfully led from the orchestra under Thomas Hengelbrock. Vocally it was impressive also in the three leading roles. As Iphigenia Tara Erraught was superb, deservedly stepping into major opera house roles like this after a successful career as a repertory singer in Munich. Her musical range is consequently wide and varied, but she can do a leading Mozart role well (The Marriage of Figaro) and is certainly impressive in her French delivery of Gluck. Jarrett Ott was an excellent Orestes and Julien Behr offered strong lyrical support as Pylades.

Links: Paris Opera

Verdi - La Traviata (Paris, 2019)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata

Opéra National de Paris

Michele Mariotti, Simon Stone, Pretty Yende, Benjamin Bernheim, Jean-François Lapointe, Catherine Trottmann, Marion Lebègue, Julien Dran, Christian Helmer, Marc Labonnette, Thomas Dear, Luca Sannai, Enzo Coro, Olivier Ayault

Paris Cinema Live - 21 September 2019

La Traviata is a great opera and I've heard it and seen it enough times not to need reminded of that nor ever feel the need to rush out and see it again. Yet here I am again watching another production of La Traviata. Really though it's only when a director has no fresh ideas and isn't able to do much with the work, pitching it in a stuffy Belle Époque setting, that it can be a bit of a chore - and even then Verdi's music is always the saving grace. If you get a director who can show the modern relevance of the work, its humanistic outlook, its fire and sense of outrage at social conventions and conservative attitudes, well then La Traviata can still have the power to impress and bring you back to see it again.

So with it being the Paris Opera, with theatre, film and opera director Simon Stone at the helm and the chance to see a much talked about new soprano Pretty Yende singing the role of Violetta Valéry, for the first time in a long while I was actually quite looking forward to my one millionth (approximately) La Traviata. Undeterred by a strike at the Paris Opera cancelling the live performance, the Paris Opera falling back on a pre-recording made a few days ago and fortunate to have turned up early enough to not miss too much when the cinema got its European time zones wrong, it was certainly a La Traviata worth making the effort to see.

Timing evidently is everything, and the issues I had getting to see the cinema broadcast turned out to be appropriate since although it's by no means a major theme in the work, there is a pressing sense of time running down in La Traviata (something made explicit in the Willy Decker production). It's there as a consideration that becomes important to Violetta Valery as she realises that there's more to life than parties and admirers and that she should grasp the opportunity for true love and happiness for the brief moment that it is open to her when she meets Alfredo. Time however is not on her side as we of course - very quickly - find out.

Not only that but Verdi makes the pressing of time very much present in his music and in the pacing of the drama. Really we are only introduced to Violetta and Alfredo and they to each other to enjoy a brief blossoming of love in Act 1, only for it to rapidly vanish and become a victim of social and monetary pressures in Act 2. There are certainly other complex motivations - guilt, a sense of unworthiness perhaps, a consciousness of age difference - that drive Violetta to finish with Alfredo, but principally its pressure from the social gossip and reputation, and there's a simmering anger against those conventions and the underlying hipocrisy of it all the fuels La Traviata.

Director Simon Stone is very good at getting that fluid sense of time in his rotating stage for the Paris production at the Garnier. He's also good at bringing a modem sensibility - a conflicted and contrasted one - to the romantic ideal of Paris and high society in this production. Violetta Valéry is a model here, her image emblasoned on posters and video advertising hoardings for expensive perfume 'Villain'. Her image dominates the stage while the reality is of course not quite as perfect. All the trappings of the lifestyle are there of course and they are indeed trappings that it proves impossible to escape from.

So we see two sides to the glamour. The fancy night club against the more down-to-earth reality of Alfredo declaring his love for Violetta out in the back alley by the bins. A Paris sequare has a grand statue, while a drunk at the foot of the dais, and instead of the florid declarations of love, Alfredo and Violetta communicate via banal instant messages and emoticons as Violetta has an after-party kebab from a Turkish fast food stall, 'Paristanbul'. Then of course, there's the scandal that comes along with the glamour. Again updating events, Violetta is accused of dragging down the name of a Saudi royal family (presumably instead of an old-fashioned baron), the tickertape newspaper headlines updated for a digital world and spreading like wildfire. In that respect it shows that the pressures on famous women who don't behave according to expectations are arguably even greater now than in Verdi's time.

That of course is the important theme of the work and it's one that Stone is able to emphasise and show is still relevant at the same time as he is able to show the personal cost by dispensing with the fake Belle Époque glamour and mannerisms of a traditional production. Visually, it's just spectacular, images blown up on a huge digital screen backdrop, the stage rotating fluidly and impressively to keep sets changing, adding and accumulating a picture of Violetta's lifestyle, how she interacts with those around her and where the conflicts and problems arise within it. It perhaps tries a little too hard, when everything that is really essential is there in the music and can also be found in the performances, but it's an impressive spectacle nonetheless and an intelligent response to the work.

And as magnificent as the production looked, it was the musical and singing performances that contributed to the overall success of the production. The Paris Orchestra sounded terrific under Michele Mariotti's conducting, striking that beautiful balance that the work has between Verdi's lyrical flights and the underlying fury, capturing an Italianate view of Parisian glamour. The young South African soprano Pretty Yende secures her growing reputation here with a very memorable Violetta Valéry. Her singing and interpretation were superb, placing an individual stamp on the work, and her acting performance - so critical here amid the melodrama - was impressive.

Youth belying experience was also of benefit to Benjamin Bernheim's Alfredo, generating a passion with Yende's Violetta that felt real and sincere. Giorgio Germont can be a rather stuffy role just by its nature, and there wasn't much Jean-François Lapointe could do about that, but the role was well sung. Simon Stone's production might have drained a little of the heated melodrama out of La Traviata by undercutting the glamour at key points, but it was an approach that ultimately worked in favour of the work and did indeed leave the heavy lifting principally to Yende and Mariotti who, if the impact of the conclusion is anything to go by, were more than up to the task.

Links: Opéra National de Paris

Wagner - Tannhäuser (Monte-Carlo, 2017)

Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser

L'Opéra de Monte-Carlo - 2017

Nathalie Stutzmann, Jean-Louis Grinda, José Cura, Steven Humes, Annemarie Kremer, Aude Extrémo, Jean-François Lapointe, William Joyner, Roger Joakim, Gijs van der Linden, Chul-Jun Kim, Anaïs Constans

Culturebox - February 2017

The failure and the uproar caused by the first French performances of Wagner's Tannhäuser in Paris in 1861 is one of the most significant events in musical history. Wagner's new way of structuring and writing opera with through-composition was certainly viewed as a challenge to the unwritten rules of opera; rules that were strictly observed at the Paris Opera. Those rules may have had more to do with social conventions than musical ones - upsetting the dinner arrangements of the influential Jockey Club members - but Wagner's musical innovations were significant and the work at least made a strong impression despite and maybe even because of the notoriety of the perceived fiasco in Paris.

Wagner had in fact tailored his opera specifically for the French audiences at its Paris premiere, even going as far as including the obligatory ballet sequence - albeit not placed in the conventional running order. The ballet and some of the other revisions are occasionally still introduced into productions of the opera, but it's very rare that you have the opportunity to see the work performed in the French language translation that was given at in its brief three night run in Paris in 1861. It's of considerable interest then to see this rare French version of Tannhäuser revived for the Monte-Carlo Opera.

The difference the French language makes to Tannhäuser is immediately striking, if not really all that surprising. It's not really all that immediately obvious though, since in addition to the long Vorspiel, Wagner's controversially placed ballet also follows the choral Bacchanal, which means that it's a full 25 minutes before you get to hear the voice of Heinrich, or Henri as he is known in this version. And credit to José Cura, who brings his robust dramatic lyrical tenor to the role with a fluid line if not with perfect enunciation, but it's the fact that the role is sung in French that is so striking, making Tannhäuser sound almost entirely different from the more familiar German version.

As you might expect, the work has a softer, lyrical flow in French, and conductor Nathalie Stutzmann emphasises this lighter treatment with a more delicate touch. It really doesn't sound at all like the Wagner we are more familiar with, nor does it really sound like anything that we could find comparable in French opera. It's not at all like Massenet, Saint-Säens nor any of the early adopters or admirers of Wagner's methods, although only Chausson really ever attempted anything in French opera that showed overt influence. What the French version does highlight however is something closer to what Wagner himself would have been aiming for at the time of composition; something that draws from the extravagance and style of the French Grand Opéra but has a uniquely German expression. That makes it sound totally unique in that respect, and in this version you can really see why the work would have come as a shock to a conservative French audience.

Consequently, the French Tannhäuser requires a different type of singer, and that does seem to be the biggest challenge faced by the Monte-Carlo production. José Cura copes best, showing that the role of Henri requires a more lyrical Saint-Säens style tenor than it does a Heinrich Heldentenor. Even then, the French language doesn't always scan well over the long Wagnerian lines and this certainly presents problems for some of the other roles. The role of Vénus is more of a mezzo-soprano role in the French version, and it is sung well by Aude Extrémo. Élisabeth is more of a challenge, and it certainly pushes Annemarie Kremer to her limits. Steven Humes comes over well as Hermann, the Landgrave, and the Monte Carlo production also has a good Wolfram in Jean-François Lapointe, who gives a lovely rendition of 'Ô douce etoile, feu du soir' (O, du mein holder Abendstern), but Tannhäuser/Wagner is undoubtedly a challenge for the French voice. The chorus is outstanding.

Jean-Louis Grinda's production makes effective use of Laurent Castaingt's visually impressive set designs. There's an extravagance of colouration in Act I which matches the vaguely 1940s period costumes with a Powell and Pressburger like Technicolor staging. In a stage context it looks more like more the stylised designs of 'The Red Shoes' or 'Tales of Hoffmann', but it also manages to capture something of the feel of 'Colonel Blimp' or the ecstatic colour sections of 'A Matter of Life and Death'. Act I's Venusberg is extraordinary, a hallucinogenic blaze of colour and psychedelic projections that would be appropriate for Henri's indulgence in this den of sin here being more of the narcotic kind. That also suits the slighter lighter touch that takes an edge off Wagner's rather more heavy-handed social and religious moralising.

Henri's act of rebellion nonetheless still contrasts strongly with the elegant clean lines and formal dress of Act II's scenes in Wartburg. The singing contest takes place in a cathedral-like dome where a grail is ceremoniously placed centre stage. During Henri's act of rebellion, scandalising polite society with profane art that is in defiance of social niceties and musical conventions, four representations of Venus remain present, visible only to Tannhäuser. They are easily upset these fine upstanding citizens, but then so too were the original first audience at the Paris Opera, we have to remember. One can only imagine that, despite the apparent failure of the work in Paris, Wagner must have delighted that the provocation of his own act of rebellion would make him the talk of the town.

Quite what kind of acceptance that the apostate expects to find is always difficult to reconcile in Act III of Tannhäuser, and it's by no means clear what way director Jean-Louis Grinda intends to present it, other than that it is still visually arresting. In a kind of inverted world, trees hang down from the sky, while Henri appears to be walking on the clouds of heaven, while the sun rises above/below the clouds and an eye appears in the sky. Henri's salvation at the end appears to be a heavenly one only, the penitent chorus appearing over the curve rise of the stage proclaiming the miracle of the flowering staff, while Henri faces down the guns of his rivals as the last notes ring out. Heaven and eternal peace ("À lui le ciel et la paix eternelle") may be the due of the penitent sinner, but in this production there's apparently not much earthly forgiveness being offered.

Links: L'Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Culturebox

Hahn - Ciboulette (Opéra Comique 2013 - Webcast)

Reynaldo Hahn - Ciboulette

Opéra Comique, Paris, 2013

Laurence Equilbey, Michel Fau, Julie Fuchs, Jean-François Lapointe, Julien Behr, Eva Ganizate, Ronan Debois, Cécile Achille, Jean-Claude Sarragosse, Guillemette Laurens, Patrick Kabongo Mubenga, François Rougier, Bernadette Lafont, Michel Fau, Jérôme Deschamps

Culturebox - 20 February 2013

Laurence Equilbey and Michel Fau, the musical and theatrical directors of this production of Ciboulette for the Opéra Comique clearly understand and manage to get across essential purpose of Renaldo Hahn's 1923 opérette. Above all else, Ciboulette is a comedy that celebrates a specific period, or perhaps two periods - its own time and the period of the Belle Époque.

The settings and considerations of the time and the audience for which it was written are critical for the whole character of the work. Reynaldo Hahn was well-known for his French music-hall melodies, and in many respects Ciboulette was a home-grown response to the American musical comedy, particularly those that portrayed the Belle Époque period less authentically. Ciboulette, hardly any less idealistically, celebrates the innocent beauty of the age with its depictions of the Les Halles market in Paris, with the countryside (or at least the Parisian suburb of Aubervilliers which was the countryside back then), and the sets consequently look like period sepia-tinted monochrome photos with splashes of hand-colouration.

The music for Ciboulette, conducted with a delicate lightness by Laurence Equilbey, is also authentically music-hall in style for a plot that is as frothy as they come. It concerns the romantic complications of Ciboulette, a young market-seller at Les Halles. Her aunt and uncle in Aubervilliers are pushing the young woman to marry, but the decision is not an easy one for Ciboulette who is engaged to no less than eight suitors. Playing for time, Ciboulette announces her engagement to a young man she has discovered hiding in her market cart, Antonin de Mourmelon, a millionaire who has just been jilted by his mistress, the glamorous and flirty Zénobie.

The path to true love in a comic operetta is of course rather more complicated than that. The plot to Ciboulette involves a gypsy prediction of three signs (which are revealed in amusing ways) that will ensure that Antonin is the right man for Ciboulette, and it even goes ot the lengths of Ciboulette taking to the stage in the guise of a Spanish singer, Conchita Ciboulero. Unable to resist the strange allure of this beautiful woman to whom he confesses his love, Antonin nonetheless reveals his intention to remain true to the memory of Ciboulette. The signs fall into place - after many comic interludes and songs - and all ends well.

Ciboulette is in some ways a throwback to the golden age of the opéra-comique (with a few references to Favart, Offenbach, Meilhac and Halévy thrown into the libretto), but despite its knowing wit and cleverness, it's not really a pastiche, but clearly intended to be light, entertaining and filled with tunes for the enjoyment of the audience of its own time. There's a self-awareness then, but that was there even in Offenbach's time, and its a characteristic that gives the opera a sense of sophistication for all its lightness. Self-awareness, but not self-importance. It's not looking to art or posterity, but to present the very best kind of musical entertainment for its audience.

Ciboulette does that with a certain degree of charm, even if it's not quite as smart and funny as the best Offenbach. The music hall melodies and songs, despite Hahn's reputation, didn't strike me as being particularly memorable, while the comedy relies heavily on repetition. It seems to work to the principle that if you keep repeating phrases and words, they will eventually just become funny. On the other hand, much of the success of this type of work lies in the hands of the performers, and it must be played with the right amount of verve and comic exaggeration.

Alongside the beautiful set designs and lighting that give the work a delightful and appropriate sense of period charm and innocence, it is indeed in the performances that really bring Ciboulette to life. Julie Fuchs doesn't have a big operatic voice, but one that is pure, sweet and lyrical with just a touch of the French music hall tradition. Julien Behr is indeed a perfect match as Antonin de Mourmelon, but there is fine singing also here from Jean-François Lapointe as Duparquet. It's the secondary comic acting turns that are just as critical here as the singing roles, and those are very capably handled. Quintessentially French, Ciboulette is the kind of work that the Opéra Comique excels in producing as the home of French lyric theatre.

Links - Culturebox, Opéra Comique

Gluck - Iphigénie en Aulide/Iphigénie en Tauride

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Iphigénie en Aulide/Iphigénie en Tauride


De Nederlandse Opera, Amsterdam, 2011

Marc Minkowski, Pierre Audi, Véronique Gens, Salomé Haller, Nicolas Testé, Anne Sofie von Otter, Frédéric Antouin, Martijn Cornet, Christian Helmer, Laurent Alvaro

Mireille Delunsch, Laurent Alvaro, Jean-François Lapointe, Yann Beuron, Simone Riksman, Rosanne von Sandwijk, Peter Arink, Harry Teenwen

Opus Arte

You don't see productions of Iphigénie en Aulide coming along very often, or indeed much of C.W. Gluck's works these days which, considering the importance of the composer to the world of opera, is something of a mystery. Even more rarely do you see it paired the way it is here at the De Nederlandse Opera with its sister work Iphigénie en Tauride, but the two works are perfectly complementary. Composed at different times with a different approach to Gluck's reformist agenda, they were perhaps never intended to be performed together, but the pairing of the two works side-by-side like this at least allows those differences in approach - so important to the progress and development of the traditional form of the modern opera - to be better appreciated. And at a time when you can see numerous complete productions of Berlioz's epic Les Troyens, there's no reason why Gluck's smaller scale and more intimate take on a related Greek mythological story shouldn't also be seen in this kind of staging.

As it happens, the intimacy and relative simplicity of the work make Gluck's two Iphigénie operas rather more difficult to stage by a company with the resources to take it on in a relatively large modern theatre. Those challenges are taken on by Pierre Audi, the artistic director of De Nederlandse in the setting of the Amsterdam Music Theatre, while the musical challenges of presenting the works is placed in the experienced hands of Marc Minkowski and his remarkable period-instrument ensemble, Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble. The difficulties in presenting the two works aren't entirely overcome by the innovative approach employed here - playing largely in the round, compressing the drama into a small area at the front of the stage and putting the orchestra at the back, with the chorus section arranged oratorio behind them - but it's a staging that works well in as far as it draws the full dramatic power out of the works. Which is what Gluck is all about really.

The subjects may be classical ones from Euripides, but by getting right back to basics of dramatic situation and expression, Gluck was able to find deeply human characteristics - love, anger, betrayal, vengeance - in mythological situations that elevated those feelings and emotions by placing them in the grander picture of questions of war, honour, duty, fate, destiny if you like, or the will of the Gods. There's consequently an intimacy as well as an epic quality that gives Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride immense power. They are stories of great simplicity and utmost gravity, and they require little more - as Pierre Audi recognises here - than a few strong images and symbols to help define their essential characteristics and at the same time serve to link them together. In Iphigénie en Aulide, the image and the notion of a blade (an axe here) pressed to a daughter's breast by her father in an act of sacrifice to the goddess Diana, is one that resonates throughout the whole work, influencing and directing the complex emotions and family issues that arise out of this terrible and tragic situation. In Iphigénie en Tauride, the image of sacrifice and family tragedy is also central to the work, Iphigenia now a priestess of Diana and about to unwittingly execute her brother Orestes, who (as any good opera goer knows from Strauss's Elektra) has been involved in a situation that has seen him take bloody justice upon their mother Clytemnestra for the death of their father Agamemnon.

Pierre Audi does reasonably well to give dramatic action to the poetry of the libretti in both works, retaining the intimacy of the emotional focus, while at the same time finding a way to project that out to an audience at the Amsterdam Music Theatre. He does that by reducing the size of the stage, focussing in on a central area flanked by scaffolding staircases that is emphasised here on the filmed recording by some overhead views of a circle that from one scene to the next can represent a sacrificial altar or a pit. It's not much to look at, and the costumes are far from classical, the colours, materials and camouflage patterns emphasising the military aspect of the Greek-Trojan war background in Iphigénie en Aulide, although Iphigénie en Tauride is a little more traditional in the gowns of the priestesses- but it's sufficient to hint at the greater sequence of events that set these dramas into motion without over-dramatising or over-emphasising actions over the expression though the words, the singing and the music.

And that perfect balance is precisely what Gluck's reformist agenda set out to achieve. It's hard then to fault the presentation and the careful equilibrium that is maintained by Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble in conjunction with the stage direction and the singing. I'm not as familiar with Iphigénie en Aulide as I am with Iphigénie en Tauride, but it's clear by the spirited orchestral performance of the latter, wonderfully expressive, delivered with controlled ferocity in places even, that the music director has taken into consideration the relative merits of the two different approaches that the individual works represent and dealt with them accordingly, using each to highlight, contrast with and complement the other. In the case of Iphigénie en Tauride, I've heard it performed with more beauty and lyricism by William Christie and Les Arts Florissantes (in a Claus Guth production on DVD), but never quite so forcefully in a way that integrates it so well with the musical drama. Both works are performed moreover on period instruments tuned to the original pitch.

The singing is also strong in the performances of both works, with only Salomé Haller's Diana common to both. Iphigenia in Iphigénie en Aulide is sung and performed marvellously by Veronique Gens with her customary attention to detail and the requirements of Baroque opera singing. There are no mannerisms and no exaggeration by any of the performers, who treat the work with the necessary dramatic gravity and sincerity. Surprisingly, as she is such a wonderful singer of Gluck, and has even recorded the role of Clytemnestra in this opera before, only Anne Sofie von Otter seemed underpowered and unable to match the intensity of the performances.

In Iphigénie en Tauride, Iphegenia is sung by Mireille Delunsch, a soprano in a role that is more often sung by a mezzo-soprano. More than just capably sung, Delunsch has a nice tone and timbre that suits arrangement here and proves to be strong enough to make the necessary impression. The casting for this work however favours and puts more emphasis on the fate and the friendship of Orestes and Plyade. Orestes is sung wonderfully by Jean-François Lapointe, who not only bears a certain similarity in appearance to Bryn Terfel but also has a comparable voice. Strong, with clear diction and good expression (if a little stiff in acting), he certainly makes more of an impression as a true baritone than Plácido Domingo did at the Metropolitan Opera a few seasons ago. He also works wonderfully off Yann Beuron's excellent Pylade, the two combined bringing another dimension to the work.

The presentation on Blu-ray is strong with a clear, bright and detailed image. The audio mixes, on account of the acoustics, are a little bright and echoing, losing focus in the surround DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix. The PCM track through headphones however reveals the qualities of the sound and the performances very well. As well as two full-length operas on this release, there are also two 20-minute Behind the Scenes Introductions on the BD, one for each opera, and Cast Galleries. The booklet contains an essay and two full synopses. The BD is All-region compatible, with subtitles in English, French, German, Dutch and Korean.