The temper of this performance is clear from the opening bars. This is a large-scale reading of the work, intended for a modern audience in a big modern opera-house—La Scala, in fact—and Riccardo Muti pulls no punches for the sake of eighteenth-century style. The orchestral storm to which the curtain rises is not only fiery but grand and broad in its phrasing, Iphigenie's entry is uncompromisingly passionate, Carol Vaness's huge and vibrant voice ringing through across the textures in thrilling fashion, a shade gusty, perhaps, but gutsy too. The sense of foreboding is unmistakable.
Iphigenie en Tauride is a very great opera, probably Gluck's finest achievement, for all that most of its music is recycled from earlier works. It is full of marvellous, deeply evocative things, ideas that resonate deeply even when (perhaps especially when) Gluck's actual handling is, as sometimes happens, rather clumsy. Muti, it is clear, responds strongly to its passion. There are aspects of his interpretation that some, and not just stylists or purists, may find exceptionable: heavily slow tempos here and there, where the music and the drama need to press on (some of the priestesses' music in the last act, for example, or the closing scene of Act 2), romantic rallentandos, and the spongy textures that so often in eighteenth-century music result from the absence of a harpsichord to add bite and definition to the string sound. And there are a few flaws in the orchestral ensemble understandable in a public performance (if rather less so in a tape put together from six of them). But I don't think I have ever heard the emotional implications of the music so powerfully conveyed, the intensity and inevitability of the tragedy so truthfully embodied in the music, the drama so forcefully sustained. There are arguments in favour of a more classical more restrained approach to Gluck, but they seem somewhat beside the point in the light of a reading so deeply felt.
Carol Vaness makes a formidable Iphigenie. The vibrato is apt to be rather intense but she makes a truly tragic figure of the Greek princess, with ''O malheureuse Iphigenie'' a poignant outpouring of her grief (especially so at the point where the priestesses join in) and the aria at the beginning of Act 4 done with great fire. It is romantic singing, not classical, but often intensely moving. Gosta Winbergh makes an impressive Pylade, a richer and more interesting characterization than usual, with a genuinely visionary quality to the aria at the end of Act 3; and the duets with Orestes in that act as the two friends each claim the right to die for the other, are both fiery and, in the end, profoundly moving. Orestes is sung here, as in the rival set cited above, by Thomas Allen, and I could scarcely imagine a finer, more truthful or more impassioned reading of this music. He conveys the torture that racks Orestes's soul in the agonized music that begins Act 2 and effectively shades the sound for Orestes's illusory peace in the famous aria, a moment later, ''Le calme rentre dans mon coeur''. He too excels in the duet scenes. Thoas is capably sung by Giorgio Surian though in Act I his voice is apt to be covered by the orchestra. The smaller parts are not all done with much style.
Which of these sets, Muti's or Gardiner's, the only ones that need to be considered seriously, is the one to have? Gardiner's has Diana Montague in the title-role, in a performance that is beautifully shaped and measured, and sometimes a shade strained at the top; Vaness is technically no better, and generally less dear, but much more obviously involved. The Pylade here is certainly to be preferred. The Gardiner version is the more disciplined and more refined (though not done with period instruments). Rationally, that is the one to prefer; but I have to say that the sustained intensity and excitement, the sense of vision, about the Muti set makes it something quite out of the ordinary and lovers of Gluck's music will not fail to find it uplifting and illuminating. There is rather a lot of general hum, or ambient noise, from the Scala audience, and sounds of coughing and the like, as well as heavy applause at the ends of acts—irritating, but one has to admit that it is justified.'