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Radiant, desperate and touching … Alice Coote (Orpheus) and Sarah Tynan (Eurydice) in Orpheus and Eurydice.
Radiant, desperate and touching … Alice Coote (Orpheus) and Sarah Tynan (Eurydice) in Orpheus and Eurydice. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian
Radiant, desperate and touching … Alice Coote (Orpheus) and Sarah Tynan (Eurydice) in Orpheus and Eurydice. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/the Guardian

Orpheus and Eurydice review – Wayne McGregor provides a striking staging

This article is more than 4 years old

Coliseum, London
The choreographer’s staging of Gluck’s opera for ENO is full of writhing Furies and exquisite dances in the Elysian Fields

English National Opera’s Autumn schedule is dominated by the company’s Orpheus series, exploring responses to the Orpheus myth by four very different composers. Operas by Offenbach, Birtwistle and Glass can be heard as the season progresses. The opening work, however, is Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice in a staging by Wayne McGregor, conducted by Harry Bicket. The production also quietly marks this year’s Berlioz anniversary by using the edition prepared by the French composer in 1859 for the mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia, rather than Gluck’s original 1762 score or his later 1774 Paris revision.

Dance is as integral to the piece as song, which allows McGregor to add his name to the list of distinguished choreographers – Frederick Ashton, Pina Bausch and, most recently, Hofesh Shechter – who have previously tackled it. He banishes Gluck’s chorus to the pit, and their places on stage as mourners, Furies and Shades are taken by 14 dancers from Company Wayne McGregor. After Soraya Mafi’s Love has intervened in human affairs, Alice Coote’s Orpheus and, much later, Sarah Tynan’s Eurydice each acquire dancer doubles in Jacob O’Connell and Rebecca Bassett-Graham, respectively, who seem to represent the couple’s minds or souls, though their function is at times ambiguous.

There is some striking imagery. Eurydice’s body is suspended in a tank at the start as if she has become an artwork by Damien Hirst. On arrival in Hades, O’Connell is pinioned to the floor by writhing Furies until Coote’s singing allows the dancers, one by one, to let him go. An exquisite, lingering pas de deux for two men forms the centrepiece of the dances in Elysium. Later, O’Connell and Bassett-Graham perform an ecstatic duet of reunion as husband and wife are brought back together.

Dance is integral … members of Company Wayne McGregor in Orpheus and Eurydice. Photograph: Donald Cooper/Photostage

Ben Cullen Williams’s video projections on the walls and screens of Lizzie Clachan’s set, however, can be intrusive rather than atmospheric, excessively so in Hades, where constant flickers and flashes make for difficult watching. Louise Gray’s costumes, meanwhile, elide the shapes of classical drapery with contemporary fashion, but are also sometimes gaudy.

Coote, suffering from a viral infection, was singing with an apology on opening night. Her voice lacked its customary lustre, and there was some strain in the big bravura aria that closes act one. Even so, there were fine moments, with Gluck’s long lines carefully sustained and recitatives hurled out in grief or bitterness. Her best singing was reserved for the final act, where the long colloquy with Eurydice gained in intensity as it progressed and the famous lament was delivered with great sincerity. Tynan makes a lovely Eurydice, radiant in her aria in the Elysian Fields, desperate and touching later on as she wrongly assumes that Orpheus is emotionally withdrawing from her. Mafi, with her silvery tone and elegant sense of line, is very beguiling as Love.

The choral singing, superb throughout, has real bite in the scene with the Furies and affecting warmth when we reach the Elysian Shades. Bicket could perhaps relax his speeds at this point, though, rather than pressing urgently forwards. His no-nonsense approach is clean, clear and scrupulous, bringing out plenty of detail in Berlioz’s modifications of Gluck’s original orchestration. I prefer a weightier orchestral sound in this work to the transparency he favours, but the playing is sharply focussed and admirable in its clarity.

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