Modernising Gluck: English Touring Opera’s new production of Orpheus and Eurydice puts a distinctly contemporary spin on the work

Gluck: Orpheus & Eurydice (Dance of the Blessed Spirits) – Louis T Partridge & Angus Bartlett – English Touring Opera [Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith]

Gluck/Leo Grant: Orpheus and Eurydice; William Morgan, Galina Averina, Rosie Lomas, director: Jenny Ogilvie, conductor: Iwan Davies; English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire

Bravely essaying the Paris version of Gluck’s masterwork, ETO combine a modern tenor hero with composer Leo Grant’s interventions to higlight the moren emotional intensity of the work in an anti-mythic production that remained curiously sterile visually

At the Paris Opera, opera scores were not stable entities and often underwent subsequent transformations. Lully’s operas remained in the repertoire for around a century after his death (in 1687) thanks to the fact that at each revival much of the music was recomposed to suit contemporary tastes. [Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel recorded Louis-Joseph Francoeur’s 1778 version of Lully’s Armide in 2019, see my review]. 

And then in 1824 there were plans for the young tenor Adolphe Nourrit (1802-1839) to sing the role of Orphée in Gluck’s opera Orphée et Eurydice, which was created for the Paris Opera in 1774 with a high-tenor in the role of Orphée. Nourrit had made his operatic debut in 1821 as Pylade in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (written for the Paris Opera in 1779). This 1821 performance would have a profound effect on the young Berlioz. Nourrit would go on to create the principal tenor roles in all of Rossini’s French operas, as well as Halévy’s La Juive (1835), and Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots (1836).

In 1824, it was quite obvious that a leading young tenor should sing the role of Orphée. The problem was that the role was too high for Nourrit and transpositions had to be made. This wasn’t Nourrit’s fault. Roles written for the haut-contre sit high in the tenor register with occasional excursions to the top of the range. Unfortunately for Nourrit, the pitch level in Paris had been rising. Pitch had been a constant battlefield between singers and instrumentalists, with rising pitch often coming about because of the desire for a brighter tone. The end result was the creation of Berlioz’s version of Orphée et Eurydice combining the French and Viennese versions into a new synthesis for female mezzo-soprano. Thus was the modern Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice born! [see my article, ‘Berlioz and the creation of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice as a 19th century masterpiece’]

For their new production of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, English Touring Opera (ETO) have leaned into this tradition. The version used is based in Gluck’s 1774 Paris version in a new English translation by George Robarts. The title role has been adjusted for a modern tenor (William Morgan), and the work re-orchestrated for smaller orchestra by Leo Grant. But Grant has gone beyond this, adding his own additional music and electronics. The production opened in Sheffield on 10 October and we caught the performance on 16 October at Hackney Empire. Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice in a new version by Leo Grant was directed by Jenny Ogilvie and conducted by Iwan Davies. William Morgan was Orpheus, Galina Averina was Eurydice and Rosie Lomas was Amor with ensemble of Isabelle Atkinson, Alexandra Meier, Guy Elliott and Jonathan Eyer, and dancers Angus Bartlett and Louis T Partridge. Designs were by Noemi Daboczi.

Gluck: Orpheus & Eurydice – William Morgan – English Touring Opera [Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith]

Director Jenny Ogilvie and designer Noemi Daboczi took a deliberately anti-mythic view of the opera. The set for the opening scene was an office, complete with a glass booth (downstage left) for meetings and another glass booth (upstage right) as a cafe/break room, and there was a lift (of course). Costumes were modern and Orpheus’s opening scene was a sort of mini-breakdown at work. The office remained the basic set for the whole opera. The rear glass booth could become translucent and was used for video (with some apparently live), and the Elysian Fields were distinctly austere and sterile. The inhabitants of the Elysian Fields were all female (the male members of the chorus in creditable drag). Then when Orpheus finally encountered Eurydice there, the set recreated what we presumed was their sitting room back on Earth. Ogilvie made their crucial and terrible scene together into something resembling a domestic dispute. The ending returned us to the office of the opening, with Eurydice appearing and we ended with Orpheus’s consternation, to one of Grant’s interventions which ended the opera on an element of questioning. All of Gluck’s celebratory music and dance at the end was cut.

Dance is an important element in the opera, and in fact when Gluck expanded the Vienna version into one for Paris it was the dance elements that he mainly worked on. There were two dancers in this production and for the Dance of the Blessed Spirits (one of Gluck’s Parisian additions) Angus Bartlett and Louis T Partridge gave us a superb pas de deux of their own devising. It was heartening to see modern dance for two men based around lifts, and this scene was one of the most memorable in the opera. Unfortunately, the two dancers were under-used in the remainder of the opera. The Dance of the Furies was notable for lacking any dance element, whilst the opening of Act Two, scene two was simply as an entracte after the interval. This lack of dance in French opera is a worrying trend amongst modern productions.

Translator George Robarts is a baritone who was Luiz in ETO’s production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Gondoliers earlier this year [see my review], and his translation of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is being used this month by Oxford Opera. His translation of Orpheus and Eurydice had a practical feel to it, with the language rather too down to earth. My biggest gripe was his use of the English pronouciation of Eurydice (stress on ‘ri’) as apposed to the Italian or French (stress on ‘di’) and each time William Morgan’s Orpheus articulated his beloved’s name it felt uncomfortable and awkward to my ears.

When ETO produced Rameau’s Dardanus in 2017 they used a tenor (Anthony Gregory) whose modern technique was close to the haut-contre [see my review]. William Morgan gave a terrific performance as the Male Chorus in ETO’s production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia last year [see my review]. However his technique is distinctly modern and he brought a high-tension intensity to the role, particularly in the upper reaches of the voice, which seemed at odds to the beautiful simplicity of Gluck’s music. Certainly Morgan gave a fine theatrical performance, inhabiting Orpheus’s grief with real directness and power, yet too often the sound world seemed to wrench the opera into a modern form.

Galina Averina made a robust and sparky Eurydice, very much a modern woman who gave as good as she got in the crucial scene with Morgan’s Orpheus. The result was undoubtedly dramatic and as a piece of kitchen-sink drama worked well, but the scene between the two lacked the classical poise and gut-wrenching elements that come from the best accounts of this music. Rosie Lomas was a lively and perky Amo.

The hard-working chorus of four did everything asked of them, this was definitely and all singing, all moving production and the singers were on-stage a lot. Vocally they made a poised group and their sound quality in the choruses made up for a disappointment in the theatrical choices made. In the pit, Iwan Davies drew finely supportive performances from his musicians.

And Leo Grant’s contribution? Well, his re-orchestration of Gluck’s original was discreet and did not intrude. However his modern interventions rather wrenched the music and I found the transitions from Gluck to Gluck/Grant rather disturbing. Grant had largely kept the original vocal lines which meant we sometimes heard music that seemed at odds with the voices. In some ways, Grant’s work did not go far enough and I think that allowing him to do a wholesale revision of the opera might have worked better. That said, friends in the audience thought Grant’s contributions were terrific.

Gluck: Orpheus & Eurydice (Dance of the Blessed Spirits) – Louis T Partridge & Angus Bartlett – English Touring Opera [Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith]

This was a deliberate modernisation of Gluck’s French original. There was little sense of trying to recreate the Paris version for modern audiences, instead we were given a contemporary reworking that involved a modern tenor and musical interventions that were intended to higlight the emotional intensity in a way that would have been foreign to Gluck.