Don’t Look Back: Orpheus and Eurydice

Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice” at LA Opera (a review)

Would the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck ever have imagined that “Orpheus and Eurydice,” his myth-based opera that explores the depths (literally, in this case) some of us will go for love, would one day be upstaged by a painting? And so we’ll begin with Arnold Böcklin’s “Isle of the Dead,” a detail of which is reproduced on the program for LA Opera’s current production, through March 25, in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
(Böcklin painted five versions of this moody, dreamy work. One was destroyed in World War II, and the others reside in Berlin, Leipzig, Basel, and New York City. The one on view here, and frequently seen on stage as well, is in Berlin.)
Gluck wrote this opera in Italian, back in 1762, and it premiered in Vienna. Later he revised and extended it for the French aristocracy, who insisted on a few dance numbers. So the 1774 version (“Orphée et Eurydice”) contains what we’ll call ballet interludes.
LA Opera has previously presented the 1762 production (“Orfeo ed Euridice”), but this time out they’ve joined forces with the Joffrey Ballet, and so in addition to three primary roles and a fine chorus, nestled to one side of the orchestra pit, we have 43 young dancers from that esteemed company. What could go wrong, right?
John Neumeier, an accomplished choreographer, not only choreographed and directs this “Orpheus,” he’s also the set, costume, and lighting designer. And he pulls it all together commendably, no doubt about it.

Now, you know the basic story: A day or two before her wedding to the musician Orpheus, Eurydice is cavorting with her friends in an open meadow and is bitten by a snake. But not just a garden snake or a gopher snake, but a poisonous adder. Then in a jiffy she’s laid out on her bier, friends and family mourning her.
A snake bite won’t do in a modern retelling, so Eurydice (sung here by Lisette Oropesa) either gets run down by a Mini Cooper or crashes it while driving (from the back of the auditorium it could be one or the other). You see, her husband, Orpheus (Maxim Mironov) is a ballet choreographer, and he’s trying to get his dancers in shape for his newest work, which is inspired by the above-mentioned “Isle of the Dead.”
Here’s what leads up to the untimely demise: Eurydice comes in late, dilly-dallies (in the vernacular, she farts around), and then gets huffy when hubby scolds her. She slaps him and storms out. The stage goes dark, we hear screeching tires, and when the lights come up we see the car and one dead ballerina.
Up to this point one may be thinking, Great, this is a bit like Matthew Bourne’s “The Red Shoes.” Thus it looks promising, with some of that delicious gravitas that we saw in LA Opera’s last incarnation of “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” thrown in for good measure.
Orpheus is grief-stricken, and what we have is the opera as lament. Or, as the minutes pass, as lingering lament.
This is where Amour (Liv Redpath) comes in, and Redpath’s voice is instantly captivating. However, she’s rather tomboyish in appearance, maybe to represent a hermaphrodite. This doesn’t seem to be made very clear.
I haven’t said much about our Orpheus, although what can be easily stated is that he has stamina, and if singing were running he’d win a marathon. However, I struggled to find the soulfulness in his voice, to detect the plaintive notes that convince us a character has become one with his part. I didn’t sense that here, and his being physically stiff rather than fluid certainly didn’t help. When the blue misty backdrop has more charisma than the performer standing in front of it we’re in some sort of trouble.

But Mironov does have his moments, such as when he pushes through a stage-wide backdrop of the Böcklin painting and is confronted by Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog. This hellhound is portrayed by three dancers who from far away look like a cross between charred burn victims and the creature in “The Shape of Water.”
Other dancers, and lots of them, then stream in from the wings, these being the Furies who try and prevent Orpheus from entering Elysium, which seems to be the same place where the Eloi live in George Pal’s filmic “Time Machine.” These dancers have a Cirque du Soleil sheen about them, and they dance around the stage signifying I don’t know what. The ballet doesn’t really move the story, and it didn’t move me, either.

As for the set, which is (let’s admit this) one reason we save up our pennies for the premier opera houses, it’s essentially three arty half-cubes pushed around by black-clad stagehands into various configurations. I’m not a big fan of minimalist staging, barring “Godot” and so on, which means I don’t give high marks to Robert Wilson despite a certain stark, aesthetic beauty to his designs. But I also know when it clicks, as in the company’s staging of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas.” And while the lighting here, in “Orpheus and Eurydice,” enhances the visual aspect, we might still be left wondering if all that money went towards housing and feeding those 43 healthy young bodies that are eating up a lot of stage time..
What should be a most poignant moment in this tale, that of Orpheus encountering his beloved and then escorting her to the surface, only to lose her when he looks back too soon, comes across rather humorously because Eurydice has another hissy fit when her husband doesn’t look her in the eye. He can’t, of course; nor can he explain why he can’t: that’s the condition imposed upon him. But she nags at him so much he simply shakes his head, wrings his hands, and turns around. And away she goes, vanishing into the elevator shaft of Hell.

Back home, in his bed (in his home or a hospital, I’m hearing both), Orpheus is weeping, and then Amour appears, stepping in through his bedroom window. It seems, because he’s shown such true devotion, et cetera, that she rewards him by bringing Eurydice back to life. But in this production, which steps around the original, Amour simply reassures Orpheus that his true love will live on inside of his heart and through his works. No great consolation that, either.
So it’s an upbeat ending, in one sense, and with a lot of dancing and the patter of many feet as our ballerinas and male dancers prance this way and that. In the future, I hope we’ll see a more intimate, quieter version of this work.
There are merits galore in this production, but this writer did not walk away starry-eyed and inspired, although I thought that the chorus, under the direction of Grant Gershon, was superb, as was James Conlon’s handling of the score (please attend his talk one hour before curtain). And while not being so keen on Mironov, Oropesa and especially Redpath were impressive.
And I will say, also, that I am and remain a great fan of early opera, beginning at the beginning with Jacopo Peri’s “L’Euridice,” which Long Beach Opera presented at the Getty Center back in 2000. I can still recall the wonderful Ellen Hargis, although I’m not so sure I ever saw her again.
Orpheus and Eurydice is onstage through March 25 in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown Los Angeles in the Music Center. Additional performances: Thursday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday, March 18, at 2 p.m.; Wednesday, March 21, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, March 25, at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $29 to $249 for some shows, and from $39 to $289 for others. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes, which includes one intermission. (213) 972-8001 or go to laopera.org. ER