Tonight, the Nederlandse Reisopera premieres a new staging of Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck, opera of all operas. With this masterpiece, the German composer put an end to Baroque malpractice in 1762. Not only were the libretti impossible to make sense of because of the endless series of subplots, but things were severely slowed down by singers who burst out in an epathetic 'trunk aria', which lacked any common ground with even the most trivial side-path.
It is no wonder that the opera audience fell and is falling like a log for this 'reform opera': an empathetic story about a tragic love is sung in an understandable style, not overgrown by endless colouratura. How strongly this opera still appeals to the imagination, I experienced yesterday, when I got talking to an Amsterdam gallery owner. She told me she knew nothing about opera, but du moment I Orfeo ed Euridice mentioned, she erupted with the aria 'che faro senza Euridice', with which the hero mourns his deceased lover.
Human proportions
Gluck brought opera back to human proportions, with scorchingly beautiful arias and heartbreaking music, which also helps tell the story. Incidentally, the Reisopera today performs not the Italian, but the French version made two years later, Orphée et Eurydice. The young director Floris Visser signed on for the staging. In a interview with Ingrid Bosman, he says he chose the French version, because in it the title role is not sung by a countertenor, but by a 'regular' tenor: 'Suddenly Orpheus becomes a méns.' [Tweet "Floris Visser: 'Suddenly Orpheus becomes a méns.' "]
Rear-view scene
Visser has also thought carefully about the famous 'looking back' scene, in which Orpheus still - and this time definitively - loses his Eurydice to the underworld. For his taste, this moment is too often presented as a symbol of the artist seeking his own suffering. Nor does he accept the view that Eurydice demands his attention out of jealousy and thus, as it were, forces him to look back. Nor does Visser believe that the gods want to punish him for his act of disobedience.
He found the solution in Plato's story, in which Alkestis gives her life to save her husband Admetus: 'Her soul was released from Hades by the gods, out of admiration for her deed. But Orpheus they sent away empty-handed from the underworld, granting him only a statue. Because he lacked the courage to die for Eurydice.'
This worked as an eye-opener for Visser: 'We fight against hell gods and furies on the assumption that there is a way to win from them. What we create is an impossible desire. That false hope leads you to go insane with grief.' In that key scene, Orpheus understands that he was never truly reunited with Eurydice. He lets her go and only then can the grieving process really begin: 'Grief is getting used to the unbearable.'
Orphée et Eurydice is carried out by THE Symphony Orchestrat and Consensus Vocalis conducted by Roger Hamilton. Performances by 1 May to 6 June.
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