Opernhaus Zürich (live stream), 14/02/2021

 Gluck : Orphée et Eurydice

Opera Zürich Chorus

Philharmonia Zürich

Stefano Montanari

There's no doubt the Orpheus legend is a good choice for a Valentine's Day show, but in a presentation like this, you have to wonder.  Zürich Opera has a bit of a reputation for out-there productions, and Christoph Marthaler's new one is a case in point.  The setting and dress are modern, the stage laid out at first like the cafeteria or the common rooms of some sort of care home or institution.  The seven extras, listed as "Blessed and Unhappy Spirits" vary between functionaries and what might be patients, epileptics, narcoleptics or obsessive-compulsives.  

Death is omnipresent; the sitting rooms appear to have funerary urns as decorations, and in the first act, there's a very Monty-Pythonesque ballet between the extras passing a cremation ashes disperser between them.  There's no obvious indication that Orpheus is any sort of musician save, perhaps, his initial outfit which has that sort of boy-band civvies look to it.  The impression of adolescence is reinforced by Euridice, who appears in a powder-blue prom dress.  As the opera progresses, however, his costume changes, until in the last scenes he looks like he's wearing a black, unfastened straight-jacket, so the question arises as to whether we are simply witnessing his degrading mental condition, and the surroundings in which he might perhaps find some sort of support and healing.  

However, I can't say that I got anything clear from this production.  There were some very strange ideas, period interruptions of spoken text (in three languages, including part of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Man"), an insertion aria for Amour, with piano accompaniment, but excision of part of the ballet music.  Some of the decisions are clearly Covid-related, and I have to wonder if some of the oddities I have seen in Covid-safe productions recently don't have any other justification than that; they are shoe-horned onto the subject matter because the director needs to do something at that point, but cannot really do what she or he might prefer under former production conditions.  This was a cold, bleak production with a humour that seemed misplaced, and an unconvincing path for Orpheus.  As it progressed, I grew more comfortable with it, but never really felt it as a true expression of the work.

As with the productions I saw last September, the Zürich Opera chorus and orchestra were not present in the theatre, but playing in their rehearsal hall about a kilometre away, and the sound 'piped' into the theatre via high-quality fibre optics.  I have to say that I found the experiment less successful this time, the sound too reverberant.  The difference was perhaps the absence of an audience.  Bodies absorb sound, and in September there was a public in the house.  The other downside was that the orchestra was a little too loud, all three of the soloists were consistently somewhat overpowered at the low end of their registers.  Other than that, however, the orchestra was well worth hearing.  This was the Berlioz edition of Glück's opera, a little richer in orchestration than a more 'authentic' version, and Stefano Montanari made the most of its detail and colour.

Nadezhda Karyazina (left, Orphée) and Chiara Skareth (centre, Eurydice)
Orphée et Eurydice, Act 3
(© Zürich Opera, 2021)

I know none of the principals, they were all new names to me.  I would have liked all three to be a little more distinct with the text, but the quality of voice was there.  Nadezhda Karyazina was dark-voiced and warm-toned but I think a little distanced by the production, she never seemed to fully engage with the part.  Neither the bravado of "Amour, viens rendre à mon âme", nor the pleas of "Laissez-vous toucher par mes pleurs", nor the wonder of "Quel nouveau ciel", nor the despair of "J'ai perdu mon Eurydice" ever quite came through.  It was, however, the first and perhaps only performance of this new production this season, and given the opportunity to sing it more often, Karyazina might well warm up to it.

Chiara Skerath was more expressive as Euridice, solemn for the most part, but managing her first appearance, where she's rendered high as a kite - voluntarily - in order to sing "Cet asile aimable" with a suitably joyous demeanour, with a reasonable amount of grace.  However, best of the trio for my liking was the fresh, high soprano of Alice Duport-Percier as a pert, not to say smug Amour.  The inserted aria in Act 2, which I assume was also by Glück, and sung in Italian, however odd its appearance, was a touching and serene moment. 

This was the kind of regietheater I don't have a lot of time for and, of course, performing conditions were not ideal, but when allowed to flow, musically, it was enjoyable.