Some families are so dysfunctional that self-destructiveness seems to be encoded in their collective DNA. Such a family was the Atrides, made famous by ancient Greek mythology. Cannibalism, regicide, patricide, matricide, fratricide, infanticide, ordinary murder, incest, rape, adultery… You name it, they did it! The two principal characters of our opera today, Iphigenia and her brother, Orestes, descendants of this infamous family, are no exceptions to the rule. They, too, are crushed under the weight of a terrible malediction. Unlike many of their predecessors, however, they manage, through purely human means, to achieve redemption. This is why for me the conclusion of Iphigenia in Tauris is one of the most uplifting in all operatic literature. In the time we have together, I would like to chart for you the spiritual journey that takes Iphigenia, the grieving high priestess of the temple in the city of Tauris, and her brother, the bedeviled Orestes, from agony to joy.
It is obvious from the very first scene of the first act that Iphigenia is trapped in a nightmarish past. Fifteen years earlier her father, Agamemnon, with the full approval of the Greek population, intended to sacrifice her—over her mother’s vehement objections—on the altar in Aulis in order to propitiate the gods during the Trojan War. Just as he was plunging the knife into her helpless body, the goddess Diana substituted an animal and whisked the young maiden off magically along with her retinue to Tauris where she was consecrated as high priestess in Diana’s service. To Iphigenia fell the gruesome task of committing ritual murder against all strangers who happened to wander onto the shores of that land. The storm that shrieks and whistles around the temple—marvellously depicted in Gluck’s music—is symbolic of the despair that is eating her alive.
Iphigenia is racked by a terrible dream she had the night before. Having suffered so much up till now during her conscious existence, she can imagine only the worst possible scenarios when she sleeps. This nightmare she relates to her fellow priestesses combines her yearning for the tenderness of which she was deprived as a child with a belief that the curse hovering over her family will never be lifted either by man or god. The palace to which she returns in her imagination is in ruins, the father whom she longs to forgive is dying at the hands of her vengeful mother, and when she sees her brother, Orestes, whom she loves deeply, she cannot refrain from murdering him with the sword she finds in her hand, despite hearing the words: Arrête, c’est Oreste. (“Stop, it is Orestes”;). If she longs for death, it is because death signifies the extinction of her consciousness and, consequently, the abolition of all the memories reminding her of a life steeped in nothing but sorrow.
Iphigenia’s character is defined by a noble stoicism that forbids her from committing suicide. Thus, she calls on the goddess Diana to assume the responsibility for bringing her liberation through death. Diana had inflicted nothing but torment on her. It is up to the goddess, then, to put an end to it. In one of the most beautiful arias Gluck ever wrote, Iphigenia sings: O toi, qui prolongeas mes jours/Reprends un bien que je déteste/Diane, je t’implore (“O you who prolonged my life, I implore you, Diana, take back a gift that I detest”;). This noble stoicism moves us even more deeply in the second act when she hears the false report that her brother, Orestes, is dead. Although she had not seen him since he was an infant, he was the one person still connecting her to life and giving it a purpose. He represented for her the possibility of a fresh beginning. The sublime aria she sings O malheureuse Iphigénie (“O wretched Iphigenia”;), expresses a grief too overwhelming and hopeless for tears. Here her voice answers and is answered by a single oboe, and the strings beneath maintain a persistent but broken rhythm, in which the third beat in every bar of four is strongly accented.
When we meet Orestes in the first and second acts, it is hard to believe that he, working in partnership with Iphigenia, will finally succeed in exorcizing their family traumas. He appears half-crazed with guilt and remorse. This may explain why he lies to Iphigenia about his own death. The Furies that he is convinced are pursuing him can be viewed as the metaphor of his moral conscience that multiplies to the infinite the shame and self-loathing that have been devouring him ever since he murdered his mother, Clytemnestra in retaliation for having slain his father, Agamemnon. Gluck depicts his torment in a magnificent aria, Dieux qui me poursuivez (“Gods who pursue me”;). Orestes is a baritone, and Gluck has set the whole of this aria, which is heavily orchestrated with horns, trumpets and drums, in the highest register of the baritone voice, thereby creating an impression of an agony unbearable to the breaking point.
Even when his feelings of guilt seem to loosen their grip on him temporarily, the reprieve is merely an illusion. In the second act, after calling on the gods thirsting for his blood to crush him, he seems to regain control over himself, and sings Le calme rentre dans mon coeur (“Calm is returning to my heart”;). As though to contradict him, however, the orchestra starts a panting, palpitating rhythmic figure, and when he drifts into sleep, the Furies which had been lurking all the while on the periphery of his consciousness now storm around him, clamoring for revenge.
What prevents Orestes from veering permanently into insanity is his friendship with Pylades, his unswervingly loyal companion. Pylades agreed to follow Orestes on the dangerous mission to Tauris in the hope of retrieving the goddess Diana’s statue, an act of repentance prescribed by the gods to Orestes to atone for murdering his mother. Yes, characters in the Greek legends can practice just about every vice on the face of this earth, but they are also capable at times of embodying virtue in its most exemplary form. Herein lies the beauty of the friendship that links the two young men. Each one is unconditionally devoted to the other. Each one sees in the other the living mirror in which is reflected the heroism to which he longs to aspire. Each one strives constantly to be worthy of the other’s love and esteem. Pylades’ commitment to his tormented friend is evident in the two arias he sings. The first, Unis depuis la plus tendre enfance, (“United since our earliest childhood”;) represents an attempt to soothe Orestes who is bitterly blaming himself for their being consigned to death. He does so with the reflection that, if they must die, at least they will die together. It reaches a height of lyrical and moral beauty equal to Iphigenia’s O toi qui prolongeas mes jours. The audience can almost feel Orestes’ anxieties gradually calmed through his friend’s mesmerizing, time-suspending lyricism. The second, Divinités des grandes âmes (“Divinity of noble souls”;), which ends the third act, expresses Pylades’ determination to rescue his friend from death at all costs. It is brilliant music, almost martial with its trumpets and drums. But the solo oboe running through it strikes once again the note of sentiment and profound affection that has been the hallmark of their relationship.
This relationship is thus a kind of symbiosis. Each of the two friends maintains his distinctive character while feeling inseparably linked to the other and enhanced by the other’s presence. When singing simultaneously, as they do several times in this opera, at times blending, at times contrasting their different timbers—remember, Pylades is a tenor and Orestes a baritone—they convey to perfection their characters’ indissoluble closeness. In this context, we can understand their heroic competitiveness as friends in the third act when each one demands to be the sacrificial victim in order to save the other’s life. Here each one blames the other for being selfish in wanting to die, since making the ultimate sacrifice is their way of demonstrating their love for one another.
Pylades’ unconditional love is not enough, however, to liberate Orestes from an all-consuming guilt that has become synonymous with a death wish. Redemption can come only through his sister, Iphigenia’s, forgiveness. This alone will regenerate him morally and jump-start his will to live. Only then will he cease calling upon Hell to open its abyss and swallow him up. The process of redemption and forgiveness begins in the third act when Iphigenia acknowledges to her fellow priestesses that she feels a strange attraction towards one of the young Greeks, in whom she cannot help tracing a vague resemblance to her brother, Orestes, as he might have grown to look. Since Iphigenia can save only one of the two prisoners, she chooses to spare the one who reminds her of her brother. But Orestes refuses to accept her decision, and threatens to commit suicide unless his friend Pylades, is sent off to Greece with a message to Iphigenia’s sister and he, Orestes, is designated as the sacrificial victim. Paradoxically, it is Orestes’ threat that will help avert the terrible tragedy and make possible the reconciliation between brother and sister.
At first glance, my remark will seem absolutely far-fetched, because as high priestess of Diana, Iphigenia is compelled to immolate her brother. We sense, however, when she sings her great aria in the fourth and final act beginning with the words “Non, cet affreux devoir je ne puis le remplir (“No, I cannot carry out this dreadful duty”;), that she will never be able to do it. She is too racked by indecision, pain, and horror to take the life of the young man for whom she feels an instinctive tenderness, even though she has not yet recognized him as Orestes. The frequency with which she prays to the goddess to steel her nerves and crush all compassion within her heart underscores her powerlessness to carry out the sacrifice. Then, a miracle takes place on a purely human level and in the etymological sense of the term, meaning a wondrous event. Sometimes, the right words said at the appropriate moment can transform a disaster into a cause for rejoicing. Just as he is about to die, Orestes draws a comparison between himself and his sister, Iphigenia, by uttering the following words: Ainsi tu péris en Aulide, Iphigénie (“Thus did you perish in Aulis, Iphigenia”;). Inadvertently, Orestes confirms his sister’s visceral intuition about his identity and provides her with the justification for refusing to perform the ritual murder. It is forbidden to contradict the laws of nature. So overjoyed is she to rediscover her lost brother that she offers her forgiveness unconditionally, thereby enabling Orestes to accept himself without shame, put his ghastly past behind him, and move resolutely towards the future as the new King of Argos. And, by forgiving her brother, Iphigenia finally exorcises the curse that had been asphyxiating her whole dynasty.
This purely human resolution of a potentially very tragic situation is, for me, wonderfully heart-warming. When Diana appears at the end of the drama, she is no longer a dea ex machina. Divine intervention now is completely unnecessary. Iphigenia has restored peace and joy to her family simply by embracing her brother with utmost tenderness and in a spirit of spontaneous forgiveness. And Orestes, responding to her generosity and compassion, has finally made peace with himself. Two vulnerable human beings have thus performed a miracle without any outside help. The heavenly messenger only confirms with her divine authority the sentence of forgiveness already pronounced de jure by her high priestess. As for the soldiers of the tyrant of Tauris, Pylades and his Greek troops have by now neutralized them.
The note of exultation on which the opera ends should not, however, delude us into thinking that the composer’s vision of the universe was unalterably optimistic. The King of Tauris, Thoas, dispels this notion. Thoas is a self-righteous religious fanatic, superstitious, barbaric, and bloodthirsty. He is impermeable to reason or compassion. He has an irreducible hatred of the Other, precisely because the Other is different from him. Anyone or anything that does not conform rigidly to his narrow-minded beliefs must be annihilated. He worships gods that are hideous caricatures of divinity. They are nothing more than personifications of the insatiably cruel demon he carries within himself. By a stroke of genius Gluck makes Thoas, who has, by the final act, shed every vestige of his Greek veneer and become all barbarian, quote from the bloodthirsty hymn sung by his subjects at the end of Act I when the captives first appeared—a savage unison phrase—as he points to Orestes and cries Immole ce captif (“Immolate this captive”;).
Nor should the deeply moving reconciliation between brother and sister at the conclusion of Iphigenia in Tauris lead us to think that the rest of the journey on which they must embark together will be without turmoil. Life and turmoil are inseparable. But we are at the opera now and have every right to treat ourselves to the luxury of suspending our skepticism at least for a few hours and rejoice with the heroes as Gluck celebrates their moral triumph in the final act with joyous music.
I should advise you, though, that my interpretation of this opera—very similar to the one presented at the Met last year—is far more optimistic than the production you are about to see. In Robert Carsen’s staging for the COC, the characters are enclosed in an unrelentingly claustrophobic space, and when a white light shines on the stage towards the end of the drama, the symbolism remains rather ambivalent. But these differences of opinion are normal among opera lovers. A great work of art is characterized by its polyvalence of expression. If you have seen the opera yourself, please let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you.
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