By Harriet Cunningham
Iphigénie en TauridePinchgut Opera
City Recital Hall, December 3
★★★★½
Pinchgut Opera could not have asked for a better start to their second opera for 2014. The gods are clearly angry. Outside, lighting bolts shatter the skies over Sydney. Inside, a chorus clings to a rock under stroboscopic lighting as the orchestra boils and thunders beneath them. It is easy to believe that their world is falling apart.
Unfailing intensity: Caitlin Hulcup in Iphigénie en Tauride.Credit: Keith Saunders
Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride is another great find for Pinchgut, dug from dark recesses of the late 18th century, dusted off and given a fresh lease of life. It bears all the trappings of the Greek tragedy which inspired it: a family broken by war, a heroine distraught with grief, a hero caught in an existential headlock. This is the crazy kind of opera where two men spend most of the third act arguing not over who gets the girl but over who gets to die first. And yet, in spite of the calls for blood and lugubrious invocations to the heavens, not to mention the Sturm und Drang inside and out, Gluck's ravishing music and deft dramaturgy carry this would-be horror story with noble restraint.
His cause is helped along the way with a near perfect production. Director Lindy Hume, working with set designer Tony Assness and lighting designer Matthew Marshall, has created a simple but effective space. On it she moulds her characters (in sculptural and sometimes unwieldy costumes, designed by Alistair Trung) with a rare simplicity to form arresting tableaux. The women's chorus, for example, fans out behind Iphigénie like an extension of her train, or grabs Orestes in a jail-like mesh of arms, gilding the drama with elegant hysteria.
Musically, this production is in safe hands. Antony Walker conducts a generous-sized Orchestra of the Antipodes with a tight, fizzing beat. He brings out Gluck's expanding orchestral palette in all its technicolour glory, with period bassoons and trombones a real treat.
Over the top of this busy sonic party the voices sail out, for the most part crisp and well focused. Christopher Saunders, as Pylades, Orestes' fellow prisoner, has the toughest job, dramatically and acoustically, but he makes a valiant fist of it, finding great beauty in his Act II aria. Grant Doyle is a stunning Orestes, occupying the role with a profound sense of fate, all the more devastating for its restraint. Vocally, he doesn't hold back, unleashing one of the smoothest, most agile baritones I have heard in a while. As for the title role, Caitlin Hulcup carries this immense part with unfailing intensity, maintaining a purity of tone and fleetness of phrasing throughout the most turbulent of arias, and always skilfully amplified by her attendant chorus. Christopher Richardson is an almost endearing Thoas, eager for blood, and his troop of baddies thump and leer with rude energy.
With all this joyous music-making, it's small wonder that by the end of the evening even the gods seem to approve.
This performance is repeated on December 5, 7 and 9.