The Lieto Fine Convention in Gluck’s «Iphigénie en Tauride»

Stefan Münch

Abstract

The convention of the happy ending in opera librettos, which had reigned supreme virtually since the beginnings of the genre until the rise of grand opera, was a result of theoretical reflection as much as of the preferences of the audiences. There was virtually no story (the most popular Biblical, mythological, historical and literary motifs included) that a skillful librettist could not conclude with an elegant lieto fine. Christoph Willibald Gluck composed two operas about Agamemnon’s daughter as the main heroine, i.e. Iphigénie en Aulide (1774) and Iphigénie en Tauride (1779). Both were premiered by the Parisian Académie Royale de Musique. Through references to the successive stage embodiments of Iphigenia (by Euripides, Racine, Du Roullet, Guillard) and taking into account the operatic context of earlier works by Jommelli, Traetta, Campra, and Desmarets, we can see how Gluck combined the key premises of his opera reform with the tradition of lieto fine, which the audiences of Paris and Vienna had come to expect. The aesthetic of Iphigénie en Tauride garnered much praise from representatives of the Sturm und Drang generation as well.