Orphée et Eurydice (1994) (TV)

Directors:

Peter Butler
Stefanos Lazaridis

Writer:

Raniero de Calzabigi (writer)

Genre:

Drama | Music

Plot:

An opera in two acts retelling the classic Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Euridice, first produced in Paris in 1774 |

Plot Keywords:

Opera | Character Name In Title

Cast

David Hobson	...	Orphée
Miriam Gormley	...	L'Amour
Amanda Thane	...	Eurydice
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Marco Guidarini	...	Himself - Conductor

Runtime:

Australia:108 min

Country:

Australia

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Company:

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

Gluck's Masterwork Benefits from Creative Staging But Remains Dramatically Lacking

German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck hit his musical high watermark with this renowned 1762 opera, famous for bringing a far greater sense of dramatic structure to opera seria than previous Italianate works. Twelve years after its debut, Gluck revised the work to suit French tastes in the 1774 Paris Opera production by adjusting the male lead role from a castrato to a high tenor and adding dance sequences. Stefanos Lazaridis' 1993 Opera Australia production adapts that Paris Opera production and further adds decidedly contemporary elements by staging it on a modern minimalist set. Now finally on DVD in 2006, the result is arresting to the eye and often to the ear, though casting poses some problems for the surging melodrama of this relatively brief opera.

Despite the co-billing of the title, it is really Orfeo that dominates as he has the lion's share of the arias in the work. Australian tenor David Hobson is something of a pop icon in his native country thanks to his performance as Rodolfo in Baz Luhrmann's colorful 1990 production of "La Bohème". Although he often sings meltingly and has the requisite good looks, he lends a too-callow and often wooden presence as the desperately grieving widower, and the depth of the character's despair appears to escape him. This vacuity extends to some of his arias which are sung in a rather monochromatic manner and shallow timbre unsuitable for such a dramatic piece. On the other hand, soprano Amanda Thane certainly lends vocal power to Euridice, even though her impressive singing is mainly relegated to the third act. The challenge is that she and Hobson have very little chemistry as she often moves rather awkwardly onstage when she needs to come across as ethereal.

Fellow soprano Miriam Gormley has a smooth voice and lends a becalming though unrelenting presence in the small mythic role of Amore. She at least manages a fierceness of intent when she removes a knife from the suicidal Orfeo, a dramatically urgent moment in a production with precious few of them. A major plus is the seamless melding of the Australian Opera Chorus and Meryl Tankard's dance troupe as the Furies, whether providing the mournful chorus to Orfeo's grieving in the first act or writhing in erotically charged torment on a seemingly insurmountable wall in Hades in the "Dance of the Furies". The striking use of color is most effective in the depiction of the underworld, and the massive Plexiglas cube against a silvery landscape makes for a powerful image of the Elysian Fields.

Conductor Marco Guidarini does a solid job leading the opera orchestra, although the recording quality on the Kultur DVD can be rather lacking at times. Regardless of the creative staging, the area most lacking for me in this production is how the principals fail to pull off the combustible intensity necessary to make the overall dramatic situation palpable. As a point of comparison, I was fortunate enough to see Robert Carsen's stripped-down production of the original 1762 opera this past spring at the Chicago Lyric Opera with countertenor David Daniels and soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian in the title roles. Both are such charismatic performers that it mattered little that they were performing on what seemed to be a rocky moonscape. The intractable need the characters have for each other is what fails to convince in the Opera Australia production.