ABSTRACT
It was a critical commonplace to call Gluck a musical revolutionary. Yet reform of French opera was already a live issue when Gluck reached Paris in November 1773. Iphigenie en Aulide was performed on 19 April 1774 in the presence of the dauphin and his wife, Gluck's former pupil Marie Antoinette, and other royalty. There is no earlier tragedie lyrique despite, or perhaps because of, the familiarity of the subject to French audiences through Racine's Iphigenie, a work both sternly political and, its reception suggests, lachrymose. In adapting Racine's play of nearly 2000 alexandrines, du Roullet perforce reduced Agamemnon's self-justificatory tirades, and cut the wonderful confrontations with his wife Clytemnestra and with Iphigenia herself. Both Racine's poetry and Gluck's music contrive to make Agamemnon sympathetic, particularly when his last move is another attempt, overwhelmed by the pace of events, to save his daughter.
