Orful

Gluck’s music for Orfeo ed Euridice, often heart breaking but never showy, barely falls into the category of opera. It could almost be considered a cantata and might best be done in concert version. There isn’t much of a story. Newly wed Euridice has already died when the work begins; her distraught husband goes to the underworld to try and retrieve her, assisted by Amore. All he has to remember is not to look back at her. (Right. Don’t think about a pink elephant.) So boy loses girl but--deus ex machina--he gets a second chance and everyone goes home happy. So...how does one make this dramatically interesting?

Choreographer Mark Morris made the choice to decorate the stage with a number of highly distracting elements. There is set designer Allen Moyer’s three-tiered balconies filled with the members of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus, each one garbed as one historical personage or other. Out come the binoculars. “Oh look, there’s Babe Ruth! Who’s that Native American down below? Yeah, a little to the right. Is that Goering? Wait, is that Queen Elizabeth? And who’s the one in the huge hat?” Gratuitously entertaining but not serving the opera.

Likewise, Morris’ dances add nothing. Clothed in boring contemporary street attire (costumes by the usually creative Isaac Mizrahi) they walk, they reach, they bend, they turn, looking very much like a class in your local gym. In the underground they are clad in grey; in the Elysian Fields they are all in white; at the end they are dressed in bright colors and the dancing is mildly more interesting but there is a total absence of poetry in the movement.

Fortunately, the regal Kate Royal is arrestingly gowned in white (Take THAT Kate Middleton!) and wins our attention away from the galleries above with her plangent soprano. The other soprano, Lisette Oropesa, is completely charming as Amore, descending from the heavens strangely attired in a pink polo shirt. Counter-tenor David Daniels gave a lovely performance of the hit aria “Che faro senza Euridice?” but was not always audible above the orchestra, conducted by Antony Walker.

Just another case of not trusting the material and tricking it out with irrelevant production values. Ho Hum.

© meche kroop for The Opera Insider