On November 23, 2025, Washington Concert Opera (WCO) presented a performance of Iphigénie en Tauride by Christoph Willibald Gluck. The French libretto by Nicolas-François Guillard is based on the drama Iphigenia in Tauris by the Greek playwright Euripides. The opera was premiered May 18, 1779, by the Paris Opéra and was well received in its day. After the success of the opera in Paris, Gluck collaborated with librettist Johann Baptist von Alxinger to produce a German version for performance in Vienna.
Gluck holds an important place in operatic history as a reformer of contemporaneous opera practices in the early classical period. Iphigénie en Tauride, written at the height of his career, embodies these reforms, featuring shorter arias without empty displays of virtuosity, recitatives that are accompanied by the orchestra rather than just continuo, and elimination of the long dance movements common in French opera at the time.
Audiences of WCO—and this was nearly a full house in Washington, DC’s Lisner Auditorium—can depend on Antony Walker, the artistic director and conductor, for an energetic and well-honed production with world-class singers and musicians.
The audience needs to know the backstory before the four-act opera begins. King Agamemnon made a heinous pact with the gods to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to get the winds blowing so he could sail his ships to Troy, where Prince Paris had kidnapped Helen, wife of Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus. When Agamemnon returned home after the war was over, his wife Clytemnestra killed him for what he did to their daughter. Their son Orestes then killed his mother to avenge his father.
Gluck’s opera opens with a calm orchestral introduction that then transitions into a wild depiction of a storm at sea. The storm has brought to Tauris two Greeks who the merciless Scythian King Thoas (baritone John Moore) wants killed. Oracles have prophesied Thoas’ death unless all strangers are ritually murdered. These ritual killings are assigned to the priestesses of Diana’s Temple. It so happens that the head priestess is Iphigeneia (mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey), who was spirited away from her father’s knife by the goddess Diana. The goddess of the hunt took pity on the girl and substituted a deer with no one the wiser. Iphigenia doesn’t know it, but the Greek strangers are her brother Orestes (baritone Theo Hoffman) and his best friend Pylades (tenor Fran Daniel Laucerica).
As luck has it for Orestes, Iphigenia hates her job and doesn’t want to kill these two men who refuse to identify themselves. She persuades Thoas to allow her to kill only one of them and picks Pylades as her victim. Orestes objects and manages to get his friend released. Pylades is then dispatched by Iphigenia with a letter to her family. In the end, Orestes reveals himself and Pylades returns with a group of Greek men where upon Thoas is stabbed to death. Diana (soprano Erin Ridge) makes a dea ex machina appearance. She stops the fighting, pardons Orestes for killing his mother, and orders her temple statue taken back to Greece.
Initially, the sound balance was off with Theo Hoffman and Fran Daniel Laucerica belting out their respective roles as Orestes and Pylades over the more delicate voice of Kate Lindsey as Iphigenia. Additionally, the orchestra covered Lindsay’s voice as Act I opened. Rapidly, Antony Walker got the sound levels under control, giving Lindsay beguiling command of the stage. A fortepiano, prominently placed stage center within the string section and played by Chorus Master David Hanlon, was a dominant element of the opening music that created the storm.
An interesting feature of this opera was a Greek chorus function of the women’s chorus representing the Furies who are plaguing Orestes. He is psychology burdened with extreme guilt for killing his mother and the unified voice of the Furies hounds him.
A memorable moment of this performance occurred when King Thoas gets stabbed. John Moore grabbed his gut and sank to the floor. He rolled in slow motion to a prone position and stayed there until the opera ended. Such visceral acting rarely occurs in in concert opera performances such as this, which lacks sets, props, and costumes.
By chance, this reviewer met one of the female chorus members at another event the day after the WCO concert. She commented that the female chorus was a much smaller group of singers (seven sopranos and six mezzos) than what WCO usually presents. Even when the male singers (seven tenors and six basses) entered the stage in the next act, the intimacy of a smaller group was preserved. Minor cast members were drawn from both the female and male choruses
This was the only performance of Iphigénie en Tauride. On March 14, 2026, Washington Concert Opera will present Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers at Lisner Auditorium.
—Karren L. Alenier
