Monteverdi’s first opera is the masterwork that effectively established the genre. And with the flourish of the opening bars, there is a frisson of sheer wonder that, more than four centuries on, the piece can still so enchant listeners, much as the legendary Orpheus singing to the accompaniment of his lyre.
It is a work ideally suited to Longborough’s small-scale theatre and a principal attraction of Olivia Fuchs’s new staging is the presence in the raised pit of Adrian Chandler’s period-band La Serenissima, with the outlines of harp and theorbo – exquisite playing from Oliver Wass and Lynda Sayce – always visible. But, to underline the timelessness of the story of love and loss, there are colourful revelries at the marriage of Orfeo and Euridice: electric guitars and a drum kit are brought on and Orfeo is revealed as lead singer of his own band. This wedding gig has only begun when the news comes that Euridice is dead from a snake bite.
Inside a black box, Nate Gibson’s effective design is deceptively simple, its snaking curves seem to symbolise Euridice’s fate, with a central plinth rising up from a spiralling ramp, matched by the rounded contours of a metal arch. It will become the gateway to the dark of hell but, for the wedding, it is decorated with laurels, by way of connecting Orfeo with his father Apollo, who ultimately materialises as deus ex machina to effect a happier ending than the gruesome original.
By way of further contemporary resonance, the dead Euridice is wheeled in on a hospital trolley, drips and monitor attached, and this protracted depiction of the time before she can be certified dead strikes a slightly laboured note. But the medical metaphor extends to Freddie Tong’s Caronte in scrubs at the gate of the underworld. Here, seductive song is not quite sufficient and Orfeo must gag him with ether to put him to sleep.
Robert Howarth conducts a lively ensemble of 12 singers, with individuals stepping forward for the various solo roles, all vividly characterised, their movements always flowing. In the title role, Peter Gijsbertsen carries the main burden and acquits himself well: nominally a tenor but with baritonal colour, his is not an obviously beautiful sound yet flexible and intelligently used, able to convey Orfeo’s extremes of joy and anguish to moving effect. Mezzo Frances Gregory is particularly eloquent as Sylvia, who brings the heartbreaking news of Euridice’s death, and also as Proserpina, who persuades Pluto that Orfeo should take his wife back into life, with the binding condition that he should not look back at her. Appropriately, the moments when Aoife Miskelly, a lithe and graceful Euridice, touches her husband’s shoulder so as to be led out to light, offer the most iconic image.
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