Gluck’s opera “Orfeo ed Euridice” is a humorous factor: a timeless Greek fable of separation and loss, twisted right into a Viennese cream puff.
Each that darkness and light-weight are embraced within the choreographer Mark Morris’s 2007 manufacturing, which is being revived on the Metropolitan Opera starring the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. A firmly established star of the home, and a budding opera impresario, he owns the stage as Orfeo.
Gluck’s model of the Orpheus story was commissioned for a celebration of the Hapsburg emperor Francis I in 1762. The story’s conventional tragic ending was deemed not appropriate for the crown, so Gluck tacked on a joyful conclusion. (Spoiler alert: Somewhat than being cleaved for eternity, the lovers are fortunately reunited.)
Operas from round Gluck’s time have been usually little greater than autos for vocal pyrotechnics. “Orfeo ed Euridice,” as a substitute, is a personality research of the grieving Orfeo, determined to do something to be reunited together with his deceased Euridice. Costanzo is a bewitching performer who is aware of how you can transfer his voice by means of many shades of tone and that means — qualities on ample show within the aching Act III aria “Che puro ciel” and, in Act IV, “Che farò senza Euridice,” by which Orpheus realizes that he might have misplaced his beloved without end.
Seen on Thursday, Costanzo was this opera’s melancholic coronary heart and soul. The soprano Ying Fang proved a worthy complement as Euridice. She introduced a pearly tone and an equally wealthy characterization to her function, notably within the elegant Act IV duet, which curdles right into a pained quarrel as she realizes that her husband refuses to take a look at her.
One other soprano, Elena Villalón, sang the impish god Amore, who prices Orpheus together with his job of rescuing Euridice from the underworld with out gazing upon her. Villalón allowed her witty costume and spectacular entrance — clad in preppy khakis, a Pepto Bismol-pink polo shirt and a few barely scruffy wings, she descends from the rafters on wires — to do a lot of the performing for her. I wanted for a bit extra pep and chunk in her phrasing to match the staging’s zing. Against this, the conductor J. David Jackson led the orchestra with vigor and snap.
An awesome pleasure of Morris’s manufacturing is his delicate choreography, which shapes and elevates Gluck’s typically quotidian musical concepts, notably within the instrumental interludes. Morris and the costume designer, Isaac Mizrahi, outfitted the Met’s mighty, almost 100-person refrain as characters from historical past and legend, resembling Moses, Cleopatra and Shakespeare, in addition to Frederick Douglass, Mae West and Toni Morrison.
The refrain capabilities because the underworld’s everlasting bystanders, a destiny which apparently neither popes nor queens can escape. However the refrain additionally remembers the motley assemblage of stars collaged within the cowl artwork for the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Membership Band,” and a part of this manufacturing’s enjoyable is selecting out who’s who.
When, on Thursday, Euridice was resuscitated for the final time to suit the royally revised plotline, the viewers broke into figuring out laughter. It’s an implausible finish to Orpheus and Euridice’s love story, however one which — like this manufacturing — is wholly pleasant.
Orfeo ed Euridice
By way of June 8 on the Metropolitan Opera, Manhattan; metopera.org.
