{"id":97968,"date":"2019-10-31T22:00:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-31T21:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=97968"},"modified":"2019-11-03T12:07:17","modified_gmt":"2019-11-03T11:07:17","slug":"metropolitan-opera-house-orfeo-ed-euridice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/metropolitan-opera-house-orfeo-ed-euridice\/","title":{"rendered":"Metropolitan Opera House: “Orfeo ed Euridice”"},"content":{"rendered":"

New York,\u00a0Metropolitan Opera \u2013 Season 2019-20<\/span><\/em>
\n<\/i><\/span>\u201cORFEO ED EURIDICE\u201d<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/i><\/span>Opera in three acts by Ranieri de\u2019 Calzabigi
\nMusic by\u00a0<\/span>Christoph Willibald Gluck
\n<\/b><\/span>Orfeo<\/span><\/em>\u00a0JAMIE BARTON
\n<\/span>Euridice<\/span><\/em>\u00a0HEI-KYUNG HONG
\n<\/span>Amor<\/span><\/em>\u00a0HERA HYESANG PARK
\nOrchestra and Chorus\u00a0of the Metropolitan Opera
\nConductor\u00a0<\/span>Mark Wigglesworth
\n<\/b><\/span>Chorus Master<\/span>\u00a0Donald Palumbo<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/b><\/span>Production\u00a0<\/span>Mark Morris
\n<\/b><\/span>Sets\u00a0<\/span>Allen Moyer
\n<\/b><\/span>Costumes<\/span>\u00a0Isaac Mizrahi<\/span><\/b>
\n<\/b><\/span>Lighting <\/span>James F. Ingalls
\n<\/span><\/b>Choreography\u00a0<\/span>Mark Morris<\/b><\/span>
\n<\/span>New York<\/i><\/span>, 29 October, 2019
\n<\/span><\/em><\/span>There is no version of the Orpheus myth from any of the classical playwrights\u2014it\u2019s a one-character tale<\/strong>, with no confrontation worthy the stage. But opera so extols the power of music that operatic treatments were a matter of course from the moment the new form was devised. Monteverdi, and most other composers of the baroque who created such operas, filled out the action with subsidiary characters. Gluck, 150 years later, in one of opera\u2019s periodic times of \u201creform,\u201d focused on Orpheus himself and his personal evolution during his mythic adventure. In the French elaboration of Gluck\u2019s Viennese original, the role of Euridice is somewhat fleshed out, but it is still Orfeo\u2019s myth, Orfeo\u2019s travail, Orfeo\u2019s grief that are front and center. \"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span>The Metropolitan Opera\u2019s production, staged and choreographed by <\/span>Mark Morris<\/b><\/span>, is designed to make as much use of the five-story-high stage of the opera house as possible\u2014but with a hearty nod towards acoustic effects. This it achieves by featuring a chorus of historical figures from all ages, high in the air in three semicircular rows of seats, who observe and \u201ccomment\u201d on the action. They sing the mourners, furies, spirits of Elysium, who are enacted on ground level by Morris\u2019s dance company, dressed in everyday casual wear designed by <\/span>Isaac Mizrahi<\/b><\/span>. (Black for the Dance of the Furies, white for the spirits of the Elysian Fields, every color for the concluding triumph.) The intent is to show the world, living and dead, bound up in the story of rescuing a beloved spouse from death, to which Gluck (on the orders of Maria Theresa) tacked a happy ending that has no part in the legend. It isn\u2019t true: You don\u2019t get the dead back if you love them enough. You don\u2019t lose them because you have <\/span>not<\/span> loved them enough. Maria Theresa, who commissioned the opera for her beloved husband\u2019s Name Day in 1762, found that out when he died, three years later. <\/span><\/span>An entire universe of other characters aside, this production of <\/span>Orfeo<\/span>, like most of them, centers upon the principal character. Created for <\/span>David Daniels <\/b><\/span>(who perfectly incarnated the Johnny Cash-inspired \u201cMan in Black\u201d-with-guitar duds devised for him by Mizrahi), it was later taken on by <\/span>Stephanie Blythe<\/b><\/span>. \"\"<\/a>The current revival stars <\/span>Jamie Barton<\/b><\/span><\/span>, a southerner, like Daniels and therefore familiar with the Cash mystique. Barton is a favorite among young American singers, and her clarion, wide-ranging voice of great evenness, color and technical assurance, besides her ebullient personality, account for this. If anything, her \u201cI can sing anything you can sing\u201d good cheer <\/span><\/span>rather detracts from her performance in roles that call for introspection, sorrow, self-pity or morbidity\u2014emotions that do not come naturally to Barton\u2019s expressive palette. I have heard her give effective lieder programs, and do not doubt her musical intelligence and sympathy. \"\"<\/a>But though she glides through Gluck\u2019s music strongly, one does not feel the sorrow, the frantic distress, that Daniels, as great an actor as he was a singer, brought to the part. Barton\u2019s Orfeo falls agreeably on the ear, and her triumphs are shared\u2014but not the dark loneliness of Orfeo\u2019s soul. She sings like a prizewinner (and Barton has won them all), but Orpheus is a demigod, with a demigod\u2019s discovery of the limits of his power. When Barton has lived longer (she is 38) and is less sure of herself, her Orfeo will be the more worth hearing. <\/span><\/span>Euridice was entrusted to <\/span>Hei-Kyung Hong<\/b><\/span><\/em>, whose flawless career at the Met has lasted as long as Barton\u2019s lifetime. She is still a beautiful woman and an effective actress, her Gluck fills the house easily and is perfectly phrased, as her Mozart has always been, with barely a hint of age or effort. <\/span>But her emotions, too, did not seem terribly involved in the great duet of fear and recrimination that occupies the second act, as the lovers climb through <\/span>Allen Moyer<\/b><\/span>\u2019s magical cavern of sparkling sta<\/span>lactites. <\/span>Hera Hyesang Park <\/b><\/span>performed Amore with the tomboyish brashness Morris has chosen for the character, and with a very promising and sizable lyric soprano. The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra has a rather nineteenth-century sound for its Gluck; the Early Music movement has got us accustomed to something more refined. But Early Music would not have filled the Met, even resounding from the semicircular amphitheater of the set. <\/span>Mark Wigglesworth <\/b><\/span>led a swift-paced if unsubtle account of the score, which was performed without intermission.<\/span>Photo Ken Howard
\n<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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New York,\u00a0Metropolitan Opera \u2013 Season 2019-20 \u201cORFEO ED EURIDICE\u201d Opera in three acts by Ranieri de\u2019 Calzabigi Music […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":97971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24073,14679,1994,9354,22373,24075,24074,1883,1231,8025,24072,811,1993,1676],"class_list":["post-97968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-allen-moyer","tag-christoph-willibald-gluck","tag-david-daniels","tag-foreign-readers","tag-hei-kyung-hong","tag-hera-hyesang-park","tag-isaac-mizrahi","tag-james-f-ingalls","tag-jamie-barton","tag-mark-morris","tag-mark-wigglesworth","tag-metropolitan-di-new-york","tag-orfeo-ed-euridice","tag-stephanie-blythe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97974,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97968\/revisions\/97974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}