The Metropolitan Opera: Iphigénie en Tauride (Encore)

0 votes and 0 Reviews

2h 0m | Drama, Other

Before the Trojan War, Agamemnon gathered the Greek armies at the port of Aulis. The goddess Diane sent unfavorable winds to prevent the Greeks from sailing. Her oracle set a condition for Agamemnon: to earn the right to sail forth and destroy an innocent country, he would have to sacrifice his own daughter. Agamemnon accepted these terms and killed his young daughter Iphigénie on the altar. In his play Iphigenia in Tauris Euripides imagines that Diane plucked Iphigénie from that altar and delivered her to a temple in distant Tauride, where Iphigénie began to serve the enemy Scythians as Diane's high priestess—all the while Iphigénie's family believing her dead.

Fifteen years later, a storm batters Diane's temple at Tauride. Iphigénie and the other priestesses—all of them captives from Greece—ask the gods for safety and peace from the storms raging both outside and within their hearts.