All remaining live performances in the 2019–20 season at The Met have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. This is a recording from 1 November 2019.
A scene from Orfeo at The Met Photo: Ken Howard/ Met Opera
Sunday 3 May 2020 at 6pm on RNZ Concert
GLUCK: Orfeo & Euridice
Cast:
Hei-Kyung Hong (Euridice), Hera Hyesang Park (Amore), Jamie Barton (Orfeo), Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orchestra conducted by Mark Wigglesworth
Mark Morris’s spirited take on the ancient Orpheus myth stars mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton as Orfeo, the grieving lover on a quest through the underworld. Soprano Hei-Kyung Hong sings the plaintive Euridice. Mark Wigglesworth conducts Gluck’s elegant score, a pinnacle of the Baroque repertoire.
A scene from Orfeo at The Met Photo: Ken Howard/ Met Opera
The myth of the musician Orpheus—who travels to the underworld to retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice—probes the deepest questions of desire, grief, and the power (and limits) of art. Gluck turned to this legend as the basis for a work as they were developing their ideas for a new kind of opera. Disillusioned with the inflexible forms of the genre as they existed at the time, the composer sought to reform the operatic stage with a visionary and seamless union of music, poetry, and dance.
A scene from Orfeo at The Met Photo: Ken Howard/ Met Opera
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714–1787) was born in Bavaria and studied music in Milan. He travelled extensively throughout Europe, attracting students and disciples to his philosophy of an all-encompassing operatic-theatrical experience. His librettist for 'Orfeo ed Euridice' was the remarkable Italian poet Ranieri de’Calzabigi (1714–1795). Thanks to many years spent in Paris, he had been influenced by French drama and shared Gluck’s zeal for an ideal musical theatre.
A scene from Orfeo at The Met Photo: Ken Howard/ Met Opera
The opera is set in an idealised Greek countryside and in the mythological underworld. These settings are more conceptual than geographic, and notions of how they should appear can (and rightly do) change in every era.
A scene from Orfeo at The Met Photo: Ken Howard/ Met Opera
Gluck consciously avoided the sheer vocal fireworks that he felt had compromised the drama of opera during the era of the castrati - male singers who had been surgically altered before puberty to preserve their high voices. He did not originally dispense with castrati, but the castrato role of Orfeo (today sung by mezzo-sopranos and countertenors) was given an opportunity to impress through musical and dramatic refinement rather than vocal pyrotechnics.
