Orphee et Eurydice by John Eliot Gardiner

I watched Gluck’s opera Orphee et Eurydice conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, orchestrated by Revolutionnaire et Romantique with chorus by Monteverdi Choir.

John Eliot Gardiner’s orchestration is refined, dramatic and powerful.

The castrato role of Orpheus is sung by mezzo-soprano, Magdalena Kozena. As always, she sung wonderfully. She’s high mezzo-soprano which has similar voice texture with the rest of all the other solo soprano singers. So there is less layer variation when they sung trio. It is the only minor issue, if there is one.

All these female singers are pretty and also because of their make-up, they all looked like fashion models on the stage. And they have beautiful voices.

This production has such austere costume, stage setting and acting direction, which you might see in Star Trek. And yet, because Magdalena Kozena is naturally physically expressive individual including facially as much as her singing expression, these austerities didn’t suppress her expressions physically or musically.

I’ve never really sat down and listened to Gluck before. I picked this opera to watch because I thought it is Baroque opera but came to find out that it belongs to Classical. Though it’s not Baroque piece, I’m writing about it because I found some features in this opera very intriguing.

Musically, this is very well written powerful opera with some wonderful numbers which could be easily called masterpiece. Some portions of this opera sound so much like Mozart. It was written when Mozart was child so it is more likely this opera influenced Mozart.

This opera was premièred in 1762, which is the transitional period between Baroque and Classical era. The music itself is very Classical but it is different from typical either Baroque or Classical opera.

There are only four solo singers and the main character, Orpheus does most of the solo singing. Usually operas are filled with arias. But there are fewer arias in this opera and there are extensive portions of recitative, chorus and instrumental music than usual, which have importance and weight as much as aria potions.

Since Mid-Baroque period, there is distinguished line between recitatives and arias. But there is no such clear distinguish between them in this opera and they are all streamlined as in Early Baroque opera. This is very different from Late Baroque, Classical and Romantic opera.

Gluck also took all the highly decorative characteristics of Baroque music from this opera. Orpheus’s one aria “L'espoir renait dans mon ame” has extensive trilling. Except this aria, there is no da capo aria nor ornamentation singing.

The storyline is also overly simplified including libretto which is very simple, you could almost say, cheaply written.

All these things seem to mean to highlight the dramatic effect of the story musically and powerfully in the simplest ways. And I think Gluck succeeded.