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TORONTO - No matter how it's sliced -- and we use the term 'slice' advisedly -- this has to be considered the ultimate dysfunctional family.
First of all, dear old dad decides to sacrifice his daughter so he can go to war to avenge his sister-in-law's perfidity -- an act which enrages dear old ma to the point where she gets daddy in the tub and puts the knife to him. For her efforts, she gets done in by her son, who then gets captured by a bunch of barbarians who earmark him for sacrifice at the hands of their high priestess -- a homesick young lovely who just happens to be the sister whose supposed sacrifice started the whole familial bloodbath in the first place.
We are speaking, of course, of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae at the time of the Trojan War, and of his extended and clearly expendable brood -- all part of a story that was old back when Aeschylus was a pup.
But it's obviously a story with staying power, for all that, as witnessed by the fact that composer Christoph Willibald Gluck and librettist Nicolas Francois Guillard teamed up late in the 18th century to turn the tale into an opera called Iphigenie en Tauride -- the self-same opera, in fact, that Opera Atelier is staging for the second time in six years, much to the delight of many of their patrons.
OA's elegant production of Iphigenie en Tauride opened at the Elgin Theatre Saturday.
Considering the complexity of the tale, it somehow emerges as a rather simple story, set on the Isle of Tauride, where Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenie has been carried by the Goddess Diana to save the young girl from her father's sacrificial designs.
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Turns out Iphigenie has carved quite a niche for herself in her new home, becoming high priestess to a cult of Diana that believes in human sacrifice.
And when two young Greeks, returned from the Trojan Wars, are washed ashore on Tauride, it falls to her to dispatch them to Hades in pursuit of long life for Thoas (bass baritone Oliver Laquerre) who rules over Tauride.
Unknown to Iphigenie, sung here by soprano Peggy Kriha Dye, the two strangers are her brother Oresete (tenor Kresimir Spicer, making the most of a role usually sung by a baritone, despite a bad cold) and his bosom buddy, Pylade ( tenor Thomas MacLeay). The two have fled their homeland in the wake of Oreste's murder of his mother, hard on the heels of her murder of his father and been shipwrecked in the storm that starts the story.
Oh, where will all this bloodshed end.
Well, as a clue, one would be well advised to remember that in baroque opera and Greek tragedy both, messy situations are often sorted out by the gods themselves, but in this case, happily not before an audience has time to enjoy Gluck's magnificent score (served up here with considerable polish by the Tafelmusik Orchestra and Chamber Choir, under the baton of conductor Andrew Parrott) and a hugely talented cast.
And not before that same audience has a chance to enjoy yet another simply ravishing set design sprung seemingly fully formed from the breathtaking trompe l'oeil brush of Gerard Gauci and then enlivened by the glittering costumes of Dora Rust D'Eye.
And along the way, director Marshall Pynkoski and choreographer Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg weave their trademark stage magic, ratcheted up a notch or two here perhaps in an attempt to underline the homo-erotic subtext in the Damon-and-Pythius relationship between Oreste and Pylade -- which, it seems, is considered a stretch in Greek mythology by some.
Ultimately, unless you're inclined to get hung up on such considerations, it's a fine evening of entertainment, no matter how it's sliced.