An Arrestingly Transformed Orpheus Tale in Seattle Opera’s ‘O + E’

Cover image: Magda Gartner (O) and Tess Altiveros (E) in Seattle Opera’s O + E (Photo: Philip Newton)

In this latest chamber opera presented by Seattle Opera in its rehearsal studio, Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice has been transported to today’s world and a setting too familiar to many: a desperately ill soldier with her spouse by her bedside, her life in the hands of a surgeon. Yet this translated and somewhat shortened libretto by Lucy Tucker Yates of the opera now called O + E (four more performances through next weekend) hews closely to the Italian version by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, though here Orpheus’s descent into the Underworld is now an agonized half-waking, half-dreaming journey through memories for O as she waits for the surgeon’s verdict.

There are only three singers: O, sung by mezzo-soprano Magda Gartner (stepping in to sing all performances for the originally announced Hai-Ting Chinn); E, sung by soprano Tess Altiveros, and A (Amore in the original, the surgeon here), sung by soprano Serena Edutjee. The cast and the entire creative team are female, O and E are a lesbian couple, but there are men in the chorus and among the busy hospital staff and the Furies.

Seattle Opera’s studio has been transformed into a theater in the round, with risers and chairs for the audience; the orchestra, directed by Tucker Yates at the harpsichord, is behind a transparent plastic curtain. The set is spare in the extreme, a hospital bed on which E lies motionless, a chair where O sits, and a hospital light over the bed. At their first entry, the chorus members sing as they march across the stage to the back behind the orchestra, each one holding a large blue umbrella overhead, the symbolism of which escaped me. (A had one also, hers lit from the inside so she carried her own spotlight with her.)

The whole is a completely successful transformation from Gluck’s day. All three singers are excellent, the deep emotions clear in the fine acting of both Gartner and Altiveros, and with the audience so close it was easy to enter into those feelings.

It was not so easy to recognize O’s move from the reality of sitting by the hospital bed into the dreamlike state which approximated the underworld journey and then back again. Perhaps different lighting for that part would have made it clearer. However that did not detract from the brilliant transformation of Gluck’s Furies to soldiers running, falling, being hit, carrying heavy loads, and wearing safety headgear, with O bewildered in the midst and trying to reach E.

The painful journey back to the world with E more and more upset at O’s refusal to look at her is the same in old and new versions, but at E’s death, suddenly the story is transported back to the hospital bed, with O back in her chair, E in surgery. The opera ends with A coming out of surgery to give the verdict to O. As she opens her mouth to speak, the lights go off.

The point of creating this version is that profound love and loss is universal. It belongs to everybody. This version takes only 80 minutes but it’s an intense experience. Kelly Kitchens stage directs, Kathryn Van Meter choreographed the soldiers.