Opera Review: The Music of the Future

Juilliard presents Gluck's Iphigénie en Aulide.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The cast of Iphigenie en Aulide at Juilliard.
(L.-R. Ying Fang, Virginie Verrez, Brandon Cedel, Yunpeng Wang.)
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2015 The Juilliard School.

The composer Christoph Willibald Gluck was a key figure in the transition from the baroque era to the so-called classical period that followed. The agency of this revolution was opera, specifically his seminal works Orphée et Eurydice and  Iphigénie en Aulide. The latter of these was his first work for the Paris stage and was presented Tuesday night in a new production at the Juilliard School's Peter Jay Sharp Theater.