Bloodthirsty gods

Two minutes into Robert Carsen’s new production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride I thought about what an American friend of mine would have said: "this is European minimalist nonsense". Only five minutes later I was proved wrong. Minimalist it was (somewhat), but nonsense most certainly was not. Tobias Hoheisel designed a pitch black set on which the singers could write with chalk. He also designed plain black clothes for all the characters, which stood out thanks to the clever lighting provided by Carsen and Peter van Praet. That was all. It takes a very smart director and much strenuous rehearsals, therefore, to make such bare background appealing to the audience for two hours. Every movement, every gaze, every single thing has to be meaningful and planned very carefully. What Carsen did was indeed virtuoso directing, which presented…