Opera: Iphigénie en Tauride, Royal Opera House; Romeo und Juliet, St John’s
Iphigénie en Tauride
Royal Opera House
Romeo und Juliet
St John’s
It is astonishing that Gluck achieves such greatness with such limited musical resources. For me he ranks with the top four or five operatic composers, yet he remains a permanently semi-neglected figure. Elaine Padmore, the Royal Opera’s director of opera, begins her welcoming note in the programme, ‘It is all too seldom that Gluck’s operas appear in our schedules’ and then semi-apologetically explains that the new production of Iphigénie en Tauride is being mounted ‘as a preface to our Ring cycles this autumn’, a piece of condescension which would have enraged Wagner, one of Gluck’s most passionate admirers.
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