Gluck’s ‘Orphée et Eurydice’ Fascinates in an Unusual Production

The collaboration between Pacific MusicWorks and UW School of Music is a win-win situation for both. PMW music director Stephen Stubbs, who is also senior artist in residence at UW, and Tekla Cunningham, concertmaster of the PMW orchestra and UW artist in residence, have ample time to coach their students in baroque performance styles during the school year.

And, although Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice may be the last opera produced in this collaboration at Meany Theater, due to funding difficulties, it has meant a venue for Stubbs’s lofty performance visions to reach full height. PMW brings in international level soloists for the operas, drawing on top talent for stage director and designers, while the students get on the stage training as chorus and dancers.

This performance includes the extensive dance component which was a hallmark of French opera in the late 17^th and 18^th centuries. Gluck simplified the elaborate musical traditions of French opera, with less spectacular vocal acrobatics and more expressive meaning to the arias, while making extensive use of the chorus.

In this production, Grammy award-winner Aaron Sheehan sang Orphée, the biggest solo role, with sopranos Amanda Forsythe as Eurydice and Valerie Vinzant as Amour.

Sheehan’s effortless high tenor made the most musically of his role, though his acting seemed more frozen in grief than showing grief. In stage director Gilbert Blin’s concept, he mostly just stood. Why didn’t he kiss the corpse as Eurydice was first borne in, or embrace it when she dies again on her way out of Hades?

Vinzant sang well in her upper register, but her lower one felt much weaker as though insufficiently supported. Perhaps too low for her? Forsythe filled her role excellently. None of the three however has a large role. That is taken by the chorus, who were admirably trained.

What struck this audience member forcibly Saturday night were the large roles played by choreographer Anna Mansbridge and projections designer Travis Mouffe. The opera action moves slowly, and the quite-frequently changing abstract projections, vaguely or less vaguely reminiscent of nature, always held the interest and were only occasionally distracting. They included Mouffe’s use of the libretto in French, appearing on top of the abstracts as individual letters gradually sliding into place, sometimes as a fountain of letters or like rain, among other imaginative ideas. Captions in English were at the sides.

There was no set, only a rectangular hole in the stage floor, down which Eurydice was lowered on her bier to the Underworld, out of which the flaming Furies emerged, and into which Orphée descended to go find her.

Meanwhile the chorus, as nymphs and shepherds at first, then as furies, lastly as shades, had long sections to sing which were musically quite sedate. Mansbridge had the chorus drifting around (avoiding the hole) as the peasants and the shades and considerably more lively as the furies, but among them she had six dancers whose choreography was invariably worth watching. She did not use baroque dance styles, as the setting was more timeless; fluid, varied movement and arms expressed the emotions being sung.

Among memorable moments for the furies, all in flaming red (and more flames rising on the projection), was their clustering, hands raised, fingers spread like incipient claws, around Orphée, before he is allowed into Hades.

In Anna Watkins’ costume design, all performers wore a men’s version of the Asian shalmar kameez—knee length tunics over straight pants, no headgear except veils for Eurydice—different colors for each group, practical, inexpensive, and easy to move in. Peter Bracilano’s creative lighting worked well.

The excellent orchestra, half PMW players and half UW students with Stubbs conducting, played at baroque pitch, slightly lower than modern pitch. All in all, a fascinating, unusual, thought-provoking production, as we have come to expect from anything Stubbs does.