page_title: Iphigénie en Tauride
section_title: Libretto
hierarchical_section_title: Iphigénie en Tauride / Libretto
caption_attribution_description: English: Orestes and Pylades in Tauris. Detail from a Campanian red-figure krater, ca. 330 BC–320 BC. From Italy. Français&#160;: Oreste et Pylade en Tauride. Détail d'un cratère campanien à figures rouges, v. 330–320 av. J.-C. Provenance&#160;: Italie.
context_page_description: Iphigénie en Tauride is a 1779 opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck in four acts. It was his fifth opera for the French stage. The libretto was written by Nicolas-François Guillard.
  With Iphigénie, Gluck took his operatic reform to its logical conclusion. The recitatives are shorter and they are récitatif accompagné. The normal dance movements that one finds in the French tragédie en musique are almost entirely absent. The drama is ultimately based on the play Iphigenia in Tauris by the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides which deals with stories concerning the family of Agamemnon in the aftermath of the Trojan War.
context_section_description: The ultimate source of the drama was Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia in Tauris. Because of its simplicity and heroic themes this work had a particular appeal for 18th-century proponents of Neo-classicism and there were several dramatic versions in the late 1700s, the most famous of which is Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787). However, the most important as far as Gluck is concerned – because it formed the basis of Guillard's libretto – is Guimond de la Touche's spoken tragedy, which premiered in Paris on 4 June 1757. De la Touche's play was such a success that it was transferred to Vienna in 1761. It contributed to a vogue for the Tauris story in the city. In 1763 a "reform opera" on the subject by Tommaso Traetta with a libretto by Marco Coltellini, Ifigenia in Tauride, appeared on the Viennese stage. Coltellini's and Traetta's ideas on how to reform opera were similar to Gluck's and Gluck himself conducted the work in 1767. Gluck may have wanted to compose his own reform opera on the Tauris theme but Traetta's opera made this impossible for the time being. Instead, in 1765 Gluck composed a ballet, Sémiramis, which has many points in common with it and he reused some of the music from Sémiramis in Iphigénie en Tauride.
  It was only after he moved to Paris that Gluck finally had the opportunity to set the Tauris story and then only after he had composed another opera on the Iphigenia theme, Iphigénie en Aulide (1774). Beginning work in 1778, Gluck collaborated closely with the young poet Nicolas-François Guillard, who based his libretto on Guimond de la Touche's play. De la Touche's work had been praised for its simplicity, but Gluck and his librettist simplified the drama even further. Their main innovations were to begin the opera with a storm (which would have been more difficult in a spoken drama) and to delay the recognition until the finale.
  Iphigénie en Tauride was an innovative libretto in the history of opera. Michael Ewans has commented, "Gluck's most radical 'reform opera' even dispenses with a love interest. Romantic interest is peripheral to Greek drama, but Iphigénie en Tauride, 'the first opera without love to exist in our theatres' must be one of the few major operas to forego the theme altogether."
caption: Ancient Greek vase showing Orestes and Pylades meeting Iphigenia in Tauris
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "DxO Optics Pro Standard 4.1 (MacOS X) W1BVDDCW2TFW3UG", "Image DateTime": "2007:03:01 15:11:52", "Image Artist": "Marie-Lan Nguyen", "Image Copyright": "Public Domain", "Image DateTimeOriginal": "2007:03:01 15:11:52", "Image Tag 0x9216": "[1, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "352", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "3264", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "3376", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7555", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Aperture Priority", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "500", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:03:01 15:11:52", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:03:01 15:11:52", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "4906891/1000000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "232193/50000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "1/3", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "9/2", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "62", "EXIF SubSecTime": "57", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "57", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "57", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3872", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 0, 2, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "93", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "Low gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}