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Keri Fuge as Cupid in Orfeo by Luigi Rossi at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.
Tangled tale … Keri Fuge as Cupid in Orpheus by Luigi Rossi at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey
Tangled tale … Keri Fuge as Cupid in Orpheus by Luigi Rossi at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey

Orpheus review – great immediacy in an intimate space

This article is more than 8 years old

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London
The Royal Opera’s production of Luigi Rossi’s uneven footnote to operatic history gets the tragicomic balance just right, with some fine numbers

First performed at the Palais Royal in Paris in 1647, Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo is now just a footnote in early operatic history. As the first opera to be commissioned and composed in France, it was the seed from which the whole lavish tradition of the French tragédie lyrique developed over the next century, but since the 17th century its own theatrical viability has rarely been tested.

In the candlelit intimacy of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, the Royal Opera’s production of Orpheus (as it becomes in Christopher Cowell’s English translation) becomes the follow-up to the hugely successful 2014 staging of Cavalli’s L’Ormindo there. Directed by Keith Warner and conducted by Christian Curnyn with the orchestra from the Early Opera Company, it lasts three hours, but does a good job in showing just what Rossi’s score and the libretto by Francesco Buti have to offer.

Monteverdi’s groundbreaking Orfeo, which had appeared 40 years earlier, inevitably casts a shadow over Rossi’s version, though it’s the recitatives and arias of Monteverdi’s later operas, especially Il Ritorno d’Ulisse, that provide the musical models. But the narrative of Buti’s text is a tangled affair, and weaves together strands of the Orpheus myth that do not feature in either the Monteverdi, or in Gluck’s later treatment. Aristeus, who was Orpheus’s rival for Eurydice’s affections, becomes a leading character and the help that he’s given by the goddess Venus, who disguises herself as an old crone to try to persuade Eurydice to reject Orpheus, is a big element in the opera.

Mary Bevan as Orpheus (left) and Verena Gunz as Aegea (right) Photograph: Stephen Cummiskey

Orpheus’s journey to the underworld and its consequences take up less than half of the final act, and the tone of the drama regularly swings between tragedy and farce, with Aristeus’s efforts treated comically, even though they result in Eurydice’s death and Aristeus’s madness and suicide. Musically, it’s uneven, too, with some fine numbers, especially a sensuous duet for Orpheus and Eurydice at the end of the first act, a striking choral threnody over Eurydice’s corpse at the end of the second, and Aristeus’s mad scene punctuating more formulaic material.

Warner’s restrained staging gets the tragicomic balance just about right. There’s a minimum of set – just a few tables and benches – with Nicky Shaw’s costumes suggesting English restoration more than Louis XIV. All the performances – cameos as well as principals – come across with great immediacy in such a small space, though Mary Bevan had a throat infection on the first night and mimed the role of Orpheus, while it was sung (very well indeed) from the gallery by Siobhan Stagg. The other castrato role is that of Aristeus, from which Caitlin Hulcup extracts all the dramatic and musical juice, while Louise Alder is the feisty Eurydice, who has much more to do in this Orpheus opera than in most others.

At Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London, until 15 November. Box office: 020-7304 4000.

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