Glossing Gluck: Matthew Rye explores a little-known byway in the Wagnerian oeuvre

Review of Gluck, Iphigenia in Aulis (arr. Wagner), conducted Spering (Oehms Classics, 2 CDs).

November 2014, Volume 8, Number 3, 82–3.

Late in 1846, Wagner took time out from his work in completing Lohengrin to prepare Gluck’s 1774 tragédie-opéra Iphigénie en Aulide for performance at the Dresden Hoftheater. This was no mere performing edition but an extensive recomposition using Gluck’s original material to produce a drama more in line with Wagner’s own thinking at a time when he was also amassing ideas for his famous essays on theatre. Compared with Mozart’s reorchestrating of Handel, or Mahler’s of Schumann, or even the Russian nationalists’ reworking/completing of Mussorgsky and Borodin, this was less an exercise in making ‘dated’ music ‘acceptable’ for a contemporary audience than in creating a new work from the old.