There is much to relish in this stripped-down version of Orfeo
Great an admirer, as I am, of Grand Opera in Leeds, it is good to have the bracing corrective of a stripped-down production that foregrounds the music and leaves elaborate costumes and sets for another occasion, writes Mike Tilling.
Gluck’s opera also affords the opportunity to hear the excellent Opera North Chorus in two incarnations: nymphs and shepherds in Act 1 and the Furies guarding the gates into Hades in Act 2.
The plot of Orfeo ed Euridice is well known and appears in a number of different cultures. Briefly, Gluck’s version goes like this: Orfeo’s wife,Euridice dies and is carried off to the Underworld.
In some versions she is the object of desire for the God of the Underworld and he carries her off for nefarious purposes. Not so here.
Orfeo appeals to the Gods for help in recovering his wife and is answered by a gaudily dressed Amore or Cupid, Daisy Browne.
She agrees to help, but only if Orfeo neither looks at Euridice nor explains why he is ignoring her. It is clearly a test. Through the opposition of the Furies, he gets her back, but she rejects him for his coldness. She would prefer to stay in the Underworld rather then return with such an unfeeling husband.
Amore steps in, playing the deus ex machina, explains that this has been a trial and sets everything back to what is should be.
As with all myths, there is some element of human behaviour that reaches through the ages. There may be politically correct sensitivities here, but the themes of sacrifice and tenacity are surely universal.
Polly Leech sings the trouser role of Orfeo with remarkable stamina: she is on-stage for the whole of the performance and does not miss a note. She has sufficient flexibility to triumph over a role that, I assume, must have been originally written for a castrato.
Fflur Wyn’s Euridice languishes in the wings for the whole of Act 1 and most of Act 2. Perhaps her astonishment at being revived explains her initial querulousness, but then she becomes increasingly frustrated with her mysteriously frigid husband.
There is much to relish here, and you even get a famous aria: “Che faro senza Euridice’ to hum on the way home.