Review: Orfeo ed Euridice

In the 1760s, teetering on the edge between the Baroque and Classical eras, Christoph Willibald Gluck felt that opera had become too self-indulgent. Too much time was wasted on giving the singers all the best florid lines to sing, and text was repeated so often it became meaningless. Operas in this time could run near four hours long and still convey very little story at all. Gluck worked with librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi to come up with a list of reforms to bring opera back to basics, where the music focuses on conveying the drama as simply and directly as possible.

Orfeo ed Euridice clocks in at around ninety minutes. A nice little chestnut of an opera that's over and done with without an intermission.

Hei-Kyung Hong and Jamie Barton in Orfeo ed Euridice

Photo by Ken Howard

Today the Metropolitan Opera opened a revival of Mark Morris' 2007 production of Orfeo ed Euridice, and at first it seems the director has taken Gluck's reforms to their logical extremes. The curtain rises on a fairly drab set, comprising a curved wall at the back, with the chorus stacked on shelf-like platforms up along its side, which frames a simple circular playing area. The wall itself is semi-transparent, allowing for some scrim-esque lighting effects, but largely what has been formed is a dance platform, with minimal bells and whistles.

But set designer Allen Moyer's greatest trick is only to make you think this. As the opera unfolds, so does every piece of the set described above, and just when you've become convinced that the set must have deployed every trick in its sleeve, it comes up with one more. Key moments in the plot were punctuated with key developments in the set's functionality. Some moments felt perhaps even a little self-indulgent, such as when an incredibly tall staircase (the one which Orpheus descends into Hades) flies down from the ceiling, only to then descend through a trap in the stage. It seems to be screaming "look at how tall this opera house is!" But spectacle is something we go to the opera for, and this bare metal staircase was spectacle in its purest form. Sheer awe, not at the set itself, but at what it proves the opera house is capable of. If you think I'm probably overselling the staircase, just know that I haven't even begun to talk about the turntable.

The whole production adopts this sort of semi-minimalism, designed to make you think the opera is simpler than it is. The costumes, designed by Isaac Mizrahi, were two-faceted. The costumes of everyone on the floor were fairly plain and stark. This seems fairly common for contemporary productions of older operas, especially ones based on Greco-Roman stories. Sometimes it seems that period-accurate Greek dress would be more distracting than beneficial. (See: The Grand Duke) But here, vaguely minimalist costuming for the principals is only half the story. The other half is the chorus, again, stacked up against the wall, who are dressed in a variety of outfits, ranging from Roman soldiers to cowboys, and I think I even saw Cruella DeVille in there, as well as what might have been an astronaut. If this sounds wild and crazy, well, it kind of was. But it worked. The chorus was set up as onlookers. A second audience watching the action. The reason the costuming worked so well was twofold. For if the chorus was costumed just like the principals, they would seem to be part of the action, which was not within the director's apparent intent. But on the other hand, if the chorus had stuck to one particular era or style of costuming, it would raise the question of why, not to mention drawn attention to themselves by having a unified front. But I don't think this production wants you to ask about the chorus. Just to accept that they are an extra set of eyes watching along with the audience. And in practice, I found this is exactly what they did. After all, if you look out at the audience you are in, you can see people dressed in a variety of fashions, and they all form one incoherent blob. If every single person in the audience with you were wearing, say, a Roman Centurion's helmet, you would probably notice. By having this variety, chorus costumes were subdued, yet just noisy enough to blend into the background most of the time, while the costumes of the actors on the floor popped in their uniform starkness.

(Note: I said most of the time. There were a couple moments where I did find it more interesting to scan the chorus to see who was who than to actually watch the action on stage, and that's not a good thing.)

The role of the chorus from an action standpoint was filled by an ensemble of dancers on the floor. The choreography, also by Morris, was marvelous all the way through, starting with a grim accompaniment to a haunting funeral chorus, and ending with a delightfully spinny ensemble. It perfectly complemented the ebbs and flows of Gluck's music, and so in turn complemented the drama.

The three principal singers were all marvelous. Jamie Barton brought both pathos and power to the role of Oprheus. Orpheus has a reputation of being a somewhat difficult role to situate vocally, and it certainly exercises both ends of the singer's range. Barton runs the gamut with ease.

In the smaller-but-still-in-the-title part of Euridice, Hei-Kyung Hong was wonderful. The scene in Act II where Orpheus is leading Euridice out of Hades is the most protracted in the opera, and Barton and Hong succeeded in making the conflict of that one scene the conflict of the whole opera.

Rounding out the cast was Hera Hyesang Park as Amore. Amore in this production is portrayed comically, possibly because the role is primarily expositional, and the exposition in this libretto isn't exactly the smoothest. Much of Amore's role is to say "this is what's happening now because the gods said so and no further explanation is necessary." It's not exactly satisfying, but playing it tongue-in-cheek the way this production does allows it to pass without fighting the text, and remind the audience that, after all, it's only a play. Park, making her first entrance floating from the sky, brought the comic relief to the role without being distractingly cartoonish, and did get some well-deserved (and at that point well-needed) laughs in her second entrance two acts later. Of course her voice held up to Barton and Hong as well, and "Gli Sguardi Trattieni" proved a highlight of the opera, at least for me.

The Metropolitan Opera chorus was, of course, a musical highlight, and from their perches (choir lofts?) they sounded as good as I've ever heard them. Conductor Mark Wigglesworth lead the performance quite effectively, taking perhaps somewhat faster tempos in places than I've heard on recordings, but remember, the ethos of Gluck is not to be overly ponderous, and that is something this production and its treatment have taken to heart. It is a series of events, conveyed by emotional music and effective performances with staging that complements and supports both. It is the story of Orpheus and Euridice, in its simplest form, or as close to it as will still allow for a happy ending for all.