Iphigenia in Tauris by Gluck, Alkaen (2021/2021), Ohjannut Menila Moineaux, Musiikinjohto Edwin Spark, Pitt Street Uniting Church, Sydney City, Australia

"Oh, cursed family, forever damned! Until its last descendants, the heavens will pursue those crimes … " Marking the culmination of Gluck's operatic career, Iphigénie en Tauride premiered in Paris in 1779, amidst the twilight of an old, dynastic political regime. Drawn from Euripides' accounts of the Atreidae, Iphigénie encapsulates the composer's extensive operatic reform, and explores the stories of Iphigenia and Orestes, their lives forever altered by the devastation of the past, which threatens to pursue their present. Yet this opera isn’t just the story of one family, at one point in time; on a universal scale, Iphigénie invites us to consider the cyclical nature of violence, and asks how we may disrupt these cycles in the world around us.