OPERA: Orfeo ed Euridice

Notes on Los Angeles Opera's production of Orfeo ed Eurice by Gluck:

Vivica Genaux - beautiful voice and great actress, very moving as Orfeo: her palpable longing to look back, and her anguish at not being able to explain to Euridice. She carried herself so convincingly in her trouser role, that I was shocked for a moment when, at the curtain call, she kissed the conductor!

Maria Bayo - awesome golden powerful clarion voice. her anguish at not understanding why Orfeo wouldn't even look at her was very moving.

Beautiful choreography - especially the marvelously heart-tugging interaction of movement between Orfeo & Euridice.

The combination of music, movement, and acting, especially between O&E, was powerfully, hauntingly memorable.

The sets were minimal and abstract but very effective. In the first scene, impressions of trees in a grove, people gathered among them, with a body covered in a bright white sheet in the center (E's funeral), all given an ethereal quality by a giant nearly transparent, slightly translucent film in front of it all; contrast of characters moving in front of or behind the film.

Second scene, the gates of Hell were represented by a giant black frame, the lower portion of which was about chest high on the chorus of Furies behind it, all backlit by actual flames - very effective. Third scene - Elysian fields - two layers of those giant pieces of film that characters could be behind both, between, or in front of - again giving an ethereal quality, and a visual transition between the Elysian fields and the world of the living. When Euridice is lost, the whole floor raises up with her on it, but Orfeo left down below - good visual, but oddly disconnected from the plot timing (Euridice is visually "taken away" before it actually happens in the libretto). The god Amor, when he appears in beginning and end, is lowered down from the ceiling on a large silver ball with a Saturnine gold ring; Amor in a white toga-style gown and crown sitting side-saddle on the thing (God love her - hope she's not afraid of heights!).

The baroque music by Gluck was beautiful, but simple; no wildly ornate arias. It would definitely be a nice recording. Most of the time, the music suited the drama in its baroque way, but the touted aria "Che faro senza Euridice?", while beautiful, was strangely incongruous in a major key. The conductor Hartmut Haenchen, in his program notes, gives some musicology reasons why it should not be played as a song of mourning, but I thought the result was just slightly puzzing dramatically.