3 days to the Iphigénie premiere!

Is doesn’t happen very often that actors play a part in opera. (Pasha Selim in Mozart’s Entführung aus dem Serail is probably the best-known example.) In the Met’s Iphigénie, there are several non-singing roles that originally don’t appear in the score. Actress Jacqueline Antaramian plays Clytemnestre, the mother of Iphigénie and Oreste, who kills her husband Agamemnon and is herself killed by her son in the course of the events that precede the story of the opera. Gluck’s protagonists, haunted by their past, remember these events throughout the opera. “It’s all in the libretto, of course,” Antaramian says, coming from a rehearsal on Wednesday evening, “but modern audiences may not know their Greek history as well as people did when Gluck wrote it.” So director Stephen Wadsworth added her role and that of Agamemnon to his staging. “It works as a gentle reminder of the Oresteia saga,” Antaramian continues, talking about a scene she appears in, when Oreste is haunted by the Furies. “I think it’s brilliant what Stephen has thought of because it brings Oreste’s torment and everything he’s going through into a much more colorful light.” Another scene in Wadsworth’s production involves the story of how Iphigénie escaped death at the hands of her father. Agamemnon had been told by an oracle that he would have to sacrifice his daughter in order to lead the Greek fleet against Troy. “At the beginning of the opera,” Antaramian explains, “there’s a short pantomime where Clytemnestre is with Iphigénie. She’s very sorrowful, doesn’t know what to do, knows that Iphigenia’s death is coming. The father whisks her away, puts her on the altar, and against his better judgment kills her. And then, while the mother is grieving and arguing with the father, you see Diane come in and take Iphigénie away. It happens very fast, just to show the backstory that Iphigénie is remembering.”

For Antaramian, being part of this production is a dream come true. “This is the first opera I’m in,” she says, “and it’s a real gift to me, because I’m an opera fan. I actually studied classical music when I was younger. I never followed that dream, but followed my other dream as an actress, and now I’m bringing the two together like I never believed it would happen. Just to be on stage and to listen to the voices of Plácido and Susan and Paul, being only two feet away and getting to hear all these beautiful arias and duets, it’s so magnificent.”

This entry was posted by Philipp Brieler on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 12:11 pm and is filed under New Production Countdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.