Opera Reviews
29 March 2024
Untitled Document

Iestyn Davies and Sophie Bevan seductive in Orfeo ed Euridice



by Catriona Graham
Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice
Edinburgh International Festival
15 August 2019

Most people will know of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice through the Kathleen Ferrier recording of ‘Che faro senza Euridice’; hearing the aria sung by a counter-tenor of the class of Iestyn Davies opens up new insights. It is a long wait, though, as it comes towards the end of the three act opera which received a concert performance by The English Concert at the Edinburgh International Festival.

The opera is a big sing for Orfeo who, of the three characters, carries most of the work. Although the narrative concerns the grief of Orfeo at the death of his beloved wife Euridice, Davies sang very plainly, with no sorrowful histrionics. Plainness, however, does not imply a lack of tone, dynamic or colour. His opening cries for Euridice contrasted with the creamy tone of The English Concert choir singing the funeral song, and from there on, the clarity and ringingness of his tone was a joy.  Yet he managed to convey the extent to which Orfeo’s emotions were under a tight rein – the upper lip, metaphorically, could not have been stiffer.

Rowan Pierce’s Amor was youthful and forthright, telling it how it was to Orfeo, but not unsympathetic to his sorrow.

When the choir became the Furies, their tone changed to something rawer and harsher, which again contrasted well with the harp accompanying Orfeo’s pleading; the choir’s tone softened as they asked ‘ what sweet feeling of pity sweetly comes to soften our rage’.

The instrumental interludes – it comes from the era of the opera-ballet, after all – were cleanly and delicately played. The woodwind were particularly like the harmonising birds and murmuring streams Orfeo heard around him in the Elysian Fields.  Then the warmth in the choir’s tone announced the arrival of Euridice – and if there had been a memo about no histrionics, Sophie Bevan had definitely not received it.

Clearly overjoyed to see Orfeo again, Bevan was exuberant and not holding back on her emotions. She wanted to know how much Orfeo had missed his Euridice and that her wee spell in the Underworld had not dissipated her looks, and she wanted to know it now. It was here that Davies’ practice at holding Orfeo’s feeling on a tight rein stood him in good stead. Careful not to look in Euridice’s direction, he urged her to make haste, and with masterly restraint did not lose his temper with her petulance.  And oh, how she piled the pressure on him.

When Orfeo’s resolve snapped and he looked, Bevan’s ‘I faint … I die’ was gorgeous. And so to ‘Che faro …’, which was most intense. Davies pulled it back for the recitative ‘Wait, dear shadow of beloved’, where he is on the brink of suicide, only to be rescued by Amor, who again told it to him straight, but decided to let Euridice live after all.

Conductor Bernard Labadie had the celebratory ballet music tripping along, before the final joyful chorus of choir and principals.

Text © Catriona Graham
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