Off-the-wall opera updated - Chronicle Herald
Off-the-wall opera updated
Dalhousie students take on Offenbach’s comedy, Orpheus in the Underworld
By Our Staff
Wed. Feb 4 - 9:45 AM
[Paul Medeiros, left Becca Topp and Jeremy Dutcher rehearse a scene from Dalhousie Opera Workshop’s production of Orpheus. The opera will run from Thursday to Sunday in the Sir James Dunn Theatre. (Staff)
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Paul Medeiros, left Becca Topp and Jeremy Dutcher rehearse a scene from Dalhousie Opera Workshop’s production of Orpheus. The opera will run from Thursday to Sunday in the Sir James Dunn Theatre. (Staff)
Narcissus making love to his own head shot. Mercury on a bicycle. Jupiter being called to account for his scattershot sexual encounters. Classical mythology was never like this.
But French composer Jacques Offenbach sends the gods up with enthusiasm in his 1858 comic opera Orpheus in the Underworld. Audiences were prudish about his satire at first, expressing more shock than awe. But later, won over by pretty tunes and comic twists of plot, they ended up being enchanted and delighted.
Offenbach’s comedy has been a staple of opera company repertoires for 150 years.
In the Sir James Dunn Theatre on Thursday night, the Dalhousie Music Department Opera Workshop stages the first of four performances of Orpheus in the Underworld with two student casts, pianist Dean Bradshaw and conductor Gary Ewer. The director Nina Scott-Stoddart, in conversation with soprano Becca Topp in Marcia Swanston’s voice studio, puts it this way: “I see it as examining sexual politics. Every single scene, and there’s four of them, centres around relationships between men and women.
“In Act 1 there’s the eternal triangle: There’s Orpheus, there’s Euridice and there’s Aristaeus (who is really Pluto in disguise). All the tension there is how these three are going to work out their relationship. It’s operetta so there’s a light touch, of course, Offenbach trying to amuse and also trying to shock.
“It was a very shocking piece when it debuted in the middle of the 19th century. People were aghast that somebody would treat these sacred, high, morally lofty tales of gods and goddesses like a cheap burlesque. And Marcia found a wonderful English translation of the libretto by Jeremy Sams.”
Swanston commented: “It’s a great show with wonderful tunes. The music is really enjoyable and I have to say it really is a good translation. It’s so clever. There are so many references to contemporary attitudes, and it’s risque.”
In the classic tale, Orpheus is a musician. His wife Euridice is beautiful. While walking in her garden one day, she is fatally bitten by a snake and is taken to the Underworld. Orpheus travels to Mount Olympus, where he plays his blues so heartbreakingly that the gods decide to let Euridice come back to earth. She will follow him out of Hell, but he must not look back till he reaches Earth. Racked by doubts, he looks back expecting she will not be there. She is and has to return forever. Orpheus returns empty-handed.
Offenbach’s spin on the tale is pure tongue-in-cheek. Orpheus is a violinist, but a bad one. Euridice, driven out of her mind by his scratching, is a flirt having an affair with Aristaeus, who is Pluto, the god of the Underworld, in disguise.
Orpheus travels to Mount Olympus to present his case. He brings with him a new character: Public Opinion. Jupiter, mindful of his own children, who are watching rebelliously for any sign of hypocrisy since their mothers are mostly his own daughters, tells Pluto to give Euridice back.
Needless to say, that’s not the end of the story. The climax comes at a party in Hell where everybody, urged on by Bacchus, the god of wine, behaves badly. Jupiter resorts to a thunderbolt to sort things out.
The opera is being staged in modern dress. Topp (Feb. 5 and 7 performances), who shares the role of Euridice with Mary-Claire Sanderson (Feb. 6 and 8), says, “We’ve put in things like cellphones and iPods. Euridice is rather flighty. She doesn’t stay with any one person for any length of time. This is facilitated by the fact that she’s always plugged in, always connected, always looking for that next text message or what she wants to listen to.”
As a young woman, Topp finds a feminist perspective in the opera. “At every turn, Euridice is finding a way to pull the situation in her favour. She’s in a position of power.”
The opera plays nightly at 7:30 till Saturday, ending with a 2 p.m. matinee Sunday. Tickets are $15 and $10 and are available at the Dalhousie Arts Centre box office. Call 494-3820 or 1-800-874-1669 or purchase online (artscentre.dal.ca).
