[Wagner's] adjustments seem admirable, but so is Gluck's original, so this new recording is mildly luxurious...Nylund in the title role is good...Elsner seems to me one of the most promising young tenors around...[Spering] gets his orchestra...to play as if giving a historically informed account of an 18th-century piece of music...which means that much of Wagner's painstaking is undone.

Spering makes an excellent case for this version, with lively singing from the chorus and equally vigorous playing, the brass splendidly prominent...Breedt powerfully expresses Clytaemnestra's agony and Camilla Nylund is an ideal Iphigenia: angry, dignified, resigned.

Nylund has a clear soprano which covers the range of notes and that of changing events with assurance: a sympathetic presentation of the character...[Elsner's] tone is clean, he exerts no strain when Achilles does verbal battle with Agamemnon and deals successfully with a rather high line...Agamemnon and the priest Calchas are also well into the picture.

This is Gluck super-sized (and sung in German), but I think it's rather splendid - Christoph Spering conducts a cast of eminent Wagnerians in Wagner's 1847 Dresden arrangement, all rasping low brass and augmented winds, whilst retaining the Classical poise of the score.

This is a beautiful set, but a curious one...Handsomely conducted by Christoph Spering, and boasting some terrific choral singing from the Chorus Musical Köln, the recording is very fine. The great performance comes from Oliver Zwarg as Agamemnon, dignified, anguished and trapped, Wotan-like, in a hell of his own making...Nylund makes a fine Iphigenia