(Photo: Daniel Dittus)

Composed at the height of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s operatic reform, “Iphigénie en Tauride” distills classical tragedy into a work of striking emotional clarity and structural restraint. Without the conventional Da Capo arias and secco recitatives, Gluck integrates voice and orchestra to convey psychological depth and moral conflict. The opera’s tension between barbarism and humanity is rendered through austere yet lyrical means, achieving a rare synthesis of passion and control. It remains one of Gluck’s most compact and powerful achievements.

This refined dramatic architecture found an eloquent interpreter in the Balthasar-Neumann-Orchester under Thomas Hengelbrock. The ensemble offered a chamber-like clarity that served Gluck’s score more than beautifully, with especially energetic playing from the lower string section highlighting the composer’s richly varied textures. Their sound laid a vivid, grounded foundation for the drama, shaped with intellectual precision and restraint. At times, one could sense the potential for greater dramatic contrast—certain passages could have been more eruptive—but the overall interpretation remained thoughtfully controlled. Particularly notable was the orchestra’s seamless handling of transitions between recitative and arias, aligning with Gluck’s vision of continuous dramatic flow.

Gaëlle Arquez as Iphigénie, the high priestess tormented between duty and memory, brought remarkable vocal presence to the title role. Her voice possessed both penetrating clarity and an underlying warmth that avoided harshness. She sustained impressive vocal stamina throughout Gluck’s extended monologues, maintaining control and expressive focus. Most striking was her delivery in the scene where Iphigénie believes her brother and homeland lost—controlled yet emotionally vivid, with legato lines that carried Gluck’s noble restraint and inner anguish in equal measure. Her interactions with Orestes and Pylades were particularly compelling: moments of recognition and doubt were conveyed with intimate urgency, further heightening the opera’s emotional arc.

Domen Križaj as Oreste and Paolo Fanale as Pylades, the exiled Greek brothers, formed a vocally and dramatically well-matched pair. Križaj’s dark, focused baritone traced Oreste’s inner turmoil with quiet intensity. His “Le calme rentre dans mon cœur” stood out: the restrained delivery mirrored a soul seeking peace, while the orchestra’s unsettled undercurrent subtly undercut the character’s illusion of inner calm. This transparency and cohesion in the musical fabric revealed the psychological urgency embedded in the score, aligning with Gluck’s vision of emotional truth over textual illusion.

Fanale’s tenor, by contrast, was warm, convincing, and had natural authority. These qualities lent Pylades an inner strength that balanced his lyricism, especially moving in the moment he offers his life in place of Oreste’s. Together, their voices complemented each other with ease—their duets had an unforced, fraternal blend, and their emotional rapport was unmissable even in separation. Through them, the opera’s ethical core came into focus: loyalty and sacrifice, not as lofty ideals, but as lived, human choices.

Alexandre Duhamel as Thoas embodied the opera’s darker impulses against this emotional complexity. He captured the barbaric volatility Gluck envisioned for the role of the Scythian king. His vigorous baritone lent menace, especially in the first-act aria “De noirs pressentiments,” underpinned by the orchestra’s brutal ostinato. His presence anchored the dramatic stakes convincingly, making the contrast with Iphigénie and her Greek kin all the more vivid.

The divine intervention that resolves the plot was entrusted to Marianne Croux‘s brief but telling appearance as Diana. Her voice, poised and luminous, brought a moment of stillness and transcendence. She delivered Gluck’s final moral resolution with theatrical clarity, balancing the psychological drama with a touch of mythic distance.

Essential to the atmosphere was the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor. Not merely a background presence, they carried the weight of collective fear and awe, especially in the opening scene and sacrificial ceremonies. By frequently dividing male and female voices, the chorus not only underscored their collective support for Iphigénie but also intensified the menace surrounding Thoas, lending vivid dramatic shape to key scenes. Their diction was crystalline, and their dynamic control lent Gluck’s block choral writing unexpected nuance. While one could imagine them being given more physical stage action had this not been a concert performance, their vocal presence alone helped shape the dramatic trajectory of the evening.

Despite the concert format, the psychological theater remained captivating. That is the mark of a successful “Iphigénie en Tauride:” it does not need much staging tricks to haunt. In fact, the concise lighting arrangement and transparent yet resonant acoustics of the Elbphilharmonie successfully heightened the opera’s distilled emotional charge, allowing Gluck’s music to take center stage. Hengelbrock’s forces served not just the sound, but the structure and spirit of the work. The result was all the more moving for its restraint.