The Legacies of Iphigenie auf Tauris

Abstract

Iphigenie was written “from a study of Greek matters that was inadequate,” Goethe wrote to his friend Riemer in 1811. Had the study been more complete, he observed, the play would have remained unwritten.¹ It was one of the few serious dramas mounted by the Weimar amateur theatre, writes Nicholas Boyle.² The court theatre had burned down in 1774 with most of the professional actors moving to Gotha, a splendid baroque residential city. Figures from the Weimar court and the ducal family itself became the actors. The first performance of Goethe’s play took place at the house of the court gamekeeper Anton Hauptmann, on April 6, 1779, where a provisional stage had been set up. Knebel, after initially refusing, played the role of Thoas. Goethe himself played Orestes, and prince Constantin, brother of the duke, played Pylades, with Goethe’s friend Seidler as Arkas, Thoas’s messenger. Iphigenia was represented by the professional actress Corona Schröter, a platonic flame of Goethe’s. The spectator Luise von Göchhausen wrote to Goethe’s mother a few days later that he had “played his Orestes masterfully. His attire, like that of Pylades, was Greek und I have not seen him so beautiful in my life.”³ There were further performances that spring and summer at the Ettersburg residence on a hill overlooking Weimar and this time the duke himself played Pylades.