Iphigénie en Tauride of 1779 was Christoph Willibald Gluck’s fifth and penultimate opera for the French stage. In it he took his ideas concerning reform opera to what might be deemed their logical conclusion, employing récitatif accompagné and largely omitting the dance movements that were a hallmark of French tragédie en musique. Knowing that many of the operas and ballets he had already written in Italian would probably never be performed again, he...