Orphée et Eurydice
Jun. 21st, 2010 16:43![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyOn Thursday I went to see Willibald Cristoph Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice at the Perelman Hall of the Kimmel Center, performed by the Opera Company of Philadelphia. Apparently the version presented was actually Hector Berlioz's mid-19thC recension of Gluck's original Italian and later French versions of the opera into one four-act piece. I really liked the production and the three main performers (all women, though only one role is female in the libretto) were all excellent. I can see why the opera itself is seldom performed, however.
For those not familiar with the myth, Orpheus was the greatest musician in all of Greece, and when his wife Eurydice died the gods granted him permission to go down to the underworld to bring her back, on the condition that he not turn back to look at her until they had walked back up to the living world. But at the last Orpheus did turn back to look at his wife, and she was lost to him again forever. Later he was torn apart by Maenads (I think).
So Gluck's opera foregrounds the woman's death--it opens with Orpheus (mezzo-soprano Roxandra Dunose) and the chorus at Eurydice's grave, and follows Orpheus into the underworld after the god of love (soprano Elizabeth Reiter, dressed like a punk rocker with a red curly mohawk, FTW) grants him permission to seek Eurydice (soprano Maureen McKay), and thence to the Elysian fields, where he finds her. In Gluck's version the condition is different--Orpheus can look at Eurydice, though not directly, but once in the world above he won't be able to embrace her, and he can't tell her about the prohibition. It's very sort of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in that 18thC French way. Naturally Orpheus does look at her directly when Eurydice, having lost faith in him, starts dying again, thus killing her, but when he decides to commit suicide, the god of love, in a literal deus ex machina, restores Eurydice to life for him fully, no strings attached.
So, yes. The bits with the chorus are the most interesting, I thought, though the woman singing Orpheus was amazing--all three women were amazing. The production and lighting design by Phillipe Amand were really great, actually; everyone's wearing sort of minimalist contemporary clothing except for the god of love, and the lighting and set design were phenomenal. But if the god of love is a punk rocker I wanted Orpheus to have a guitar or something--indeed I think the libretto doesn't have enough vocal fireworks for Orpheus. Also the scenes in the Elysian Fields, in which the chorus performs a quasi-balletic dance and recitative, was very, well, 18thC French pastoral and pretty boring. Someone in the train car on my way home called it "a Disney ending", which I'd agree with; the whole point of the myth is that fate is cruel and Jupiter can't stop death, whereas the libretto has people going on about Jove's mercy, which is just so not true classically. Ironically, the happy ending is deeply unsatisfying.
For those not familiar with the myth, Orpheus was the greatest musician in all of Greece, and when his wife Eurydice died the gods granted him permission to go down to the underworld to bring her back, on the condition that he not turn back to look at her until they had walked back up to the living world. But at the last Orpheus did turn back to look at his wife, and she was lost to him again forever. Later he was torn apart by Maenads (I think).
So Gluck's opera foregrounds the woman's death--it opens with Orpheus (mezzo-soprano Roxandra Dunose) and the chorus at Eurydice's grave, and follows Orpheus into the underworld after the god of love (soprano Elizabeth Reiter, dressed like a punk rocker with a red curly mohawk, FTW) grants him permission to seek Eurydice (soprano Maureen McKay), and thence to the Elysian fields, where he finds her. In Gluck's version the condition is different--Orpheus can look at Eurydice, though not directly, but once in the world above he won't be able to embrace her, and he can't tell her about the prohibition. It's very sort of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, in that 18thC French way. Naturally Orpheus does look at her directly when Eurydice, having lost faith in him, starts dying again, thus killing her, but when he decides to commit suicide, the god of love, in a literal deus ex machina, restores Eurydice to life for him fully, no strings attached.
So, yes. The bits with the chorus are the most interesting, I thought, though the woman singing Orpheus was amazing--all three women were amazing. The production and lighting design by Phillipe Amand were really great, actually; everyone's wearing sort of minimalist contemporary clothing except for the god of love, and the lighting and set design were phenomenal. But if the god of love is a punk rocker I wanted Orpheus to have a guitar or something--indeed I think the libretto doesn't have enough vocal fireworks for Orpheus. Also the scenes in the Elysian Fields, in which the chorus performs a quasi-balletic dance and recitative, was very, well, 18thC French pastoral and pretty boring. Someone in the train car on my way home called it "a Disney ending", which I'd agree with; the whole point of the myth is that fate is cruel and Jupiter can't stop death, whereas the libretto has people going on about Jove's mercy, which is just so not true classically. Ironically, the happy ending is deeply unsatisfying.
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Date: 2010-06-22 03:05 (UTC)I'm going to see it this Friday, so good to hear the rest was good.
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Date: 2010-06-22 03:14 (UTC)