Well, I was intensely hyper -- like, gibbering quivering eyeball-spazzing hyper; Moss and Julia can vouch for that -- before the show, which is perhaps not the best mood in which to see an opera seria, and I also had a touch of hypothetic-empathetic engagement going on, as I wasn't sure whether my companions were quite as thrilled about the whole idea as I was. All of this colored my opinions, I'm sure, but I'll try to be reasonably objective about the important things. No, screw that, objective ain't in my lexicon. I'll just tell you how I saw it.
I'll get the quibbles out of the way first, so I can go straight to the good stuff. The three biggest problems were:
1. The chorus was lame in the dramatic bits. They were quite good in the melancholy bits at the beginning, and very nice in the happy bits at the end, but when they tried to be Furies, all scary and bellowing, they were just too... restrained. Didn't have the volume, nor the force. Plus the dancing in the hell scenes was less than impressive. But hell if I care about dancing. Fortunately, most of the ballets, as I mentioned before, were cut; or, rather, since it was the original Vienna version, simply weren't added in the first place (I'm glad I was warned ahead of time that there would be no "Addio, O Miei Sospiri", or I might have been royally pissed.). This means no big crazy Fury dance, and I can't say I didn't miss it, but I also can't say that it would have made up for the blessed lack of that drawn out Elysian Fields segment. On the whole, I think that the stripped down Vienna version is superior to the inflated Paris one. It's cleaner, somehow. Less bravura, more myth.
2. They started taking Eurydice away before Orfeo looked back. Now that's just wrong. I kinda understand why; she was on a platform, and they wanted her literally out of Orfeo's sight -- gone, vanished. So the audience could see her way up there in the rafters, standing stock-still like some creepy mannikin, but to Orfeo, he looks back, and -- nothing there. Gone gone gone. The problem was that it took time to raise the platform, so it had to start before he had made his irrevocable error. And it just doesn't work that way. It gutted the myth in service of the hydraulics. Boo on that.
3. The orchestra was only ok. No glaring errors, but they weren't tight the way Leppard and Gardiner's orchestras (who are my main models of Gluck performance at this point) are. Because his harmonies are so simple, and his melodies are so subtle, it's incredibly important that the rhythm works, that it has both the flexibility and the cohesion to carry off the tune. Otherwise, he can come off as flabby and boring, which -- I'm sorry to say -- happened a bit in this production, mostly when the singers weren't singing. If I hadn't heard Gluck played right before, I'd probably have come to the same conclusion that I've heard from so many other people: that he's a second-rate composer, with limited invention. But I'm lucky enough that I have heard him played right -- if only on CD and video -- so there's no fear of that. The thing about him is that everything's in service of the drama. So if you lose the quick hot force of the line of the story, you don't have much ("Gluck knows no more of counterpoint than mein Cook!" -- G. F. Handel) to fall back on.
Ok, so those are my beefs. But, overall... wonderful. The three principals, Genaux, Carmen Giannattasio, and Maria Bayo, as Orfeo, Love, and Eurydice respectively, all had gorgeous voices -- and each of them completely different in timbre and style. Genaux's reminded me just a little bit of Marilyn Horne's: virile, rich almost to the point of surfeit, but tender, and not at all biting, for all its intensity. Julia remarked that she thought Genaux lacked Horne's ease of phrasing, and, though it didn't occur to me at the time, I think she's right. She had to concentrate on singing the music, at the expense, somewhat, of emotional spontaneity, but the beauty of the sound itself carried a very great deal of the tone, and it was done with tremendous skill, no denying. As far as acting goes, it's difficult for me to say; I'm spoiled by DVDs, and used to being able to see the faces of my singers. I was back in the balcony, which meant that all I could make out were the studly curves of her limbs beneath her disheveled tux (rrrowl), but I was always comparing the indistinct figure-from-a-distance with my tape of Baker's Orfeo which I've practically got burned into my retinas. And that's not quite fair.
It was a completely different treatment of the role, for one thing -- Baker's was classical in costume and tone, and was also her final operatic performance after a long and glorious career. Genaux played the youthful Orfeo, very sleek and modern, and purposely held back hystrionics in favor of a slow psychological burn. The set was the same way: stark, abstract, but cool and elegant and intuitive. The reviewer I dissed before did completely miss the point, and was an idiot, as I'd guessed -- he thought it clumsy and dull. It wasn't at all, by any stretch. It wasn't as gaspingly soul-rendingly intense as Baker's, though -- but purposely. They were aiming at something close to Gluck's original intentions, I think. Modern: not distorted by art, not expressionistic, not self-indulgent the way baroque opera (much as I adore it) could be, but always progressing, unfolding, lingering and then leaping away, using arias like camera angles. Deliberate, but not contrived. In this respect, it was a success.
And the singing was exquisite. Really, it was. Amor had this throbbing sensual voice -- like, almost too much. Almost sloppy, it was so delicious. But not too much, no. Just enough, like the nature of the role itself. One aria and, like, two recitatives; Deus ex Machina with a laughing heart.
Eurydice's voice was pure, pearly, bloodless -- but that's as it should be. She really was a wraith -- a heartbroken, bewitching one -- up 'til the end, when she revived just enough to sing the last chorus (sans big ballet number). And then there was a brief burst of animated joy before the curtain snuffed everything out. I guess that's my other problem with the thing, but I've had the same complaint with every opera I've ever seen: NOT LONG ENOUGH. I hated being wrenched out of the story by intermission, and hated even more being wrecked on the desolate shores of IT'S OVER; GO HOME. Man. I wish I was rich and could do what Gorey did with the New York Ballet -- pick an opera company and see every single performance of theirs every single night over a period of thirty years. That might almost be enough. Until then, though, I got sporadic live tickets and a couple well-worn DVDs. And that'll do ten thousand times better than nothing.
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