Richard Wagner's entire life was about reforming opera. While in his youth – and surrounded by his existential difficulties – he would teach and conduct, arranging some of them, numerous pieces of importance to him by one of his less widely respected predecessors, Christoph Willibald Gluck – the developer of his own early opera reforms. Wagner's admiration for Gluck was so great that in 1847 he created a revision of the composer's early Iphigénie en Aulide for the Dresden theatre, and then himself taught and conducted the work's premiere. Although this version, Wagnerian in both its dramaturgy and arrangement, has since fallen into obscurity, we will be performing it in our desire to get a sharper image and a better understanding of the genius who created the Ring tetralogy.

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