5 times 'Yes' for smashing combo of dance and opera in Sasha Waltz' Orfeo

The day after the grand scenic world premiere of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, The National Opera once again comes up with a more than remarkable production of international stature. Everything and everyone dances and sings.

(1) So you think you can dance?

Sure. The modern opera singer(s) is used to some things. Simply stepping forward and singing your aria was outdated decades ago. And since stage and film directors made their entrance into opera direction, sometimes almost impossible demands are made on the singing body. Choreographer Sasha Waltz, in her staging of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo even further. Moving gracefully, that's one thing, but really dancing, even lifting each other up while singing? The soloists and choir members do it. Even the excellently playing Freiburger BarockConsort and conductor Pablo Heras-Caado have to do it at the end of the performance.

(2) So that name change was for a reason?

Indeed. The Netherlands Opera swapped the N with the National Reisopera last year, became National Opera and thus found a connection in name with that other international institution: the National Ballet. The building in which both operate changed names at the same time. Nobody used the official name Muziektheater anyway, the commonly used Stopera (city hall and opera) was never comfortable with the opera company and certainly not with the National Ballet. The building's new name, National Opera & Ballet, takes some getting used to, but it covers exactly the load. A better production to illustrate that than this consummate crossover between opera and ballet could hardly be imagined.

(3) But... singers can't dance that spectacularly well, can they?

Yep. Much better than you might think. And the admittedly spectacularly good professional dancers just sing along to the chorus parts. Probably deliberately significantly softer than the trained voices, but they sing. And the singers dance. When casting, this was obviously taken into account. And there is nothing wrong with that.

(4) Opera as a total work of art, should you take that literally?

Sure. First the music, then the lyrics? Or first the text, then the music? It is the question at the heart of Richard Strauss' Capriccio, but that question is outdated. Opera is, at its best, the art form that may not make all others redundant, but tries to unite them within itself. Sasha Waltz, precisely by combining the ancient forms of music and dance, shows and demonstrates how opera as a theatrical experience also has a right to exist in the 21st century.

(5) Is opera alive and kicking?

Yes. Just as the way Michel van der Aa combines opera and 3D film is not the future of opera, but just one of the many new forms in which the 500-year-old genre can continue to develop. Opera is not dead, not a museum art form, but alive and kicking.