How Partying In Paris And Singing R. Kelly Helped Lucas Meachem

Click here to watch an amusing anecdote from Lucas Meachem about how hanging out with Paul Groves and Susan Graham at Karaoke really paid off at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The story begins at the 5:36 marker of the video. See photos of the infamous Iphigénie en Tauride production from 2006 by clicking here. And feel free to click on the above photo to enlarge it and get lost in the blue eyes of the star baritone. Watch Lucas Meachem perform "Soliloquy" from Carousel after the jump.

Son Escapes Fratricide by High Priestess Sister in 1779

Les Remords d’Oreste (1862), William-Adolphe Bouguereau
"Ô malhereuse Iphigénie" sung by Violeta Urmana

Iphigénie en Tauride (Iphigenia in Tauris) is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck in four acts. It was his fifth opera for the French stage. The libretto was written by Nicolas-François Guillard. With Iphigénie, Gluck took his operatic reform to its logical conclusion. The recitatives are shorter and they are récitatif accompagné (i.e. the strings and perhaps other instruments are playing, not just continuo accompaniment). The normal dance movements that one finds in the French tragédie en musique are almost entirely absent. The drama is ultimately based on the play Iphigenia in Tauris by the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides which deals with stories concerning the family of Agamemnon in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Iphigénie en Tauride was first performed in Paris on May 18, 1779, and was a great success. Some think that the head of the Paris Opéra, Devismes, had attempted to stoke up the rivalry between Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni, an Italian composer also resident in the French capital, by asking them both to set an opera on the subject of Iphigenia in Tauris. In the event, Piccinni's Iphigénie en Tauride was not premiered until January 1781 and did not enjoy the popularity that Gluck's work did. [Source]

Plot summary after the jump.