# Orpheus and Eurydice



## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

Well, the Paris Opera Ballet's Orpheus and Eurydice was definitely worth seeing. The choreography was by Pina Bausch, who (according to the bio in the program) choreographed a number of operas for Wuppertal Tanztheater starting in 1973, including this one, Iphigenie auf Tauris, and Blaubart (Bluebeard). The performances in NYC of this opera/ballet were its 43rd, 44th and 45th performances by this troupe, so not a work that's been done to death (or not one that audiences have loved? lol).

At any rate, the proportions of dance to song are about 50/50 in this work. Each principal dancer (Orfeo, Eurydice, and Amour) is assigned a principal singer. There's a choir, and there's a large cast of supporting dancers. There was nothing in the program about the libretto, but there were three distinct differences between this and the Orfeo the Met does: first, it was in German; second, the Che faro comes at the end, instead of nearly at the beginning; third, he dies in the end (Orfeo).

The dancing by the principals was, I thought, pretty forgettable. It may have been athletic and wonderful - I don't want to fault the dancers for this - but generally it seemed like the dancers' motions merely amplified the music in insignificant ways. By contrast, the dancing by groups was really memorable. The expressions of grief, of desire, of worship, of predation, of other more complex but just as recognizable psychic events, were all quite unique and marvelous. Perhaps in future performances the principal roles can all be filled by trios of dancers, and then I'll love it! Well, I'll love it more. I loved this.

Mostly that's probably Gluck's fault. That I loved it. I suppose it might be possible to choreograph Gluck badly, but I'd have to see it to believe it. Gluck does something to your head, that when you leave the theater, after the curtain has come down and the orchestra has left, the music still seems to be playing on. And the silly, prosaic flesh and cement wilderness outside the orchestra hall is nothing to the music, grinding squeakily away at your heart.

The opera/ballet was in four sections, titled Grief, Violence, Peace and Death, and generally followed the action we know from the opera. Grief, of course, was the Friends of Eurydice all getting together to moan over her death; the stage was populated with a wedding-gown mannequin, a small Japanese rock garden, a tree lying on its side, and a small hopscotch cross. The tree was split in a nonobvious way, so that dancers could easily immerse themselves in its branches; I thought this was very effective. Amour popped in after the Grief ceremonies to offer Orfeo a trip to the underworld and a chance to get his sweetie back, which of course he accepted. 

Violence was the first stage of the underworld; the restless, avaricious, needy spirits expressing both being lost and being confined, together. Strings tied them to high chairs at one end of the stage, and their attempts both to reach and to get away from these chairs formed much of the action of this section of the work. About halfway through, one of the dancers removed the strings in a surreptitious, secretive manner, and this did not seem to affect either the spirits' loss or their confinement. Three dancers in butchers' aprons expressed the predatory nature of this confinement.

Peace was Orfeo's visit to the land of the Blessed Spirits, the abode of dead heroes, and prehistoric sofas and easy chairs for their use were scattered about the periphery of the stage, warmed by prehistoric smoldering logs, while the dancers expressed their adulation for these heroes in the center. There weren't many heroes occupying the easy chairs. Here Orfeo's love found him and he led her away.

Death was the tale of her inability to trust him and his inability to convince her to do so. When he gave up and looked at her for the first time, she died, of course, and the Che faro then expressed his unwillingness to continue living himself. His death was brutal and peaceful, and the butchers returned, to express their joy at this new turn of events.

It wasn't the hammer to the heart that Firebird was but it was awfully good. I'd love to see it with a period-instrument orchestra - I think they're better at bringing out the dissonances that Gluck is so good at - and multiple dancers in the principal roles. Or maybe the principal dancers could just not dance, but walk through their roles, and that would well enough express their distance from the groups of dancers.

Traviata, at Arena di Verona (opera in cinema), was pretty good I thought. The stage was taken up with old picture frames the size of the stage and larger, and with old newspapers the size of people. I thought it expressed nostalgia pretty well. Ermonela Jaho did pretty well as Violetta, and Francesco Demuro had a very strong voice as Alfredo (although his love acting seemed kind of infantile). The best job as a singer/actor was Vladimir Stoyanov as Giorgio, whose voice was large and powerful and also well colored and shaded. His role demands a number of rough acting transitions and he got through them pretty well, I thought. Overall: very enjoyable.

The crickets sing constantly, now, in the forest. An endless susurration. At night you can hear first one chorus and then another, vying for (I guess) new members by the strength of their song. It's interesting how important sound is to these insects. It seems to be a statement of power: we have joined together, we are strong.


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