Opera Singer as Acrobat
SANTA FE, NM—-Monteverdi’s opera “Orfeo,” like the ancient Greek tragedy, executes all the high drama, gore and bloodshed offstage. But this staging has the title character jumping through hoops suspended high in the sky for close to a half-hour in the most startling operatic tour de force I’ve encountered in 60 years of opera-going.
The acrobatic Orfeo is the dramatic tenor Rolando Villazón, who I hope gets a nightly hazard pay supplement, like at Covent Garden, where one veteran London on-stage dangler told me he got two pounds/6 each time for risking his skin above the stage for the good of the company, the audience and his pocketbook.
Dangling by wires in a hellish cavern, the wondrous tenor twirls, at times upside down, projecting his booming and often over-driven voice from every angle. A true singing actor, he dominates and gesticulates through the stage action, bringing to much-needed life this placid scenario left over from ancient Greece and its manipulative gods.
This is a modern adaptation of the Orpheus myth twice over. It was first adapted to opera in the epic Mantua premiere in 1607, the start of the baroque period and the earliest opera still widely performed. Then it got a modern orchestration for Santa Fe from Nico Muhly, enabling the SFO pit ensemble to tackle the score without rafts of period instruments. Purists will blanch at modern harps taking on the harpsichord passages. But in a large hall of 2,226 capacity, period instruments are hard put to compete.
As for the beloved Eurydice, she’s victim of a fatal snake bite and is dispatched to Hell, isolated
from her lover for all eternity—-and she barely gets any chance to sing about it during Orfeo’s grand show.
Among the notables in the countless voices here—is the 3rd shepherd as good as the 5th, or vice versa?—-was the Messenger of mezzo Paula Murrihy, with a black cloak covering most of the stage, bearing news of Eurydice’s demise, followed by Orfeo plaintively voicing “Restore My Love!”. Other memorable texts were his descending lament “Farewell Earth, Sky, Sun” and of course Speranza’s quote out of Dante’s Inferno, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”
The versatile dome idea, so unwieldy at first as people both ventured slippery ascents and precarious downward slides, came from Production Designer Hana S. Kim. Later lifting high up, it formed a hellish cave with projections of smoke and nebulous ghoulish figures—a brilliant depiction of Hell.
Director Yuval Sharon handled the crowd of singers adroitly, avoiding the ritornello dances in favor of farcical crowd action. Music Director Harry Picket paced the score with sensitivity from the pit. If you couldn’t identify all the 14 solo singers, fear not—-In the finale, a fetching onstage damsel moved her mouth, but the singing was done by an offstage male Apollo.
The opera ran 105 minutes without intermission.
THE UNIQUE ENVIRONMENT—It’s not just opera bringing Texans and Californians alike back here annually. It’s the NM cloudscapes and landscapes, visible from the verandas viewing the Jemez Mountains and Los Alamos lights alike.And all that pristine mountain air as well.
MONTEVERDI’S ‘ORFEO,’ in Italian, running through AUg. 24 at Santa Fe (NM) Opera, with supertitles in English. Contact santafeopera.org or (505) 986-5900.
