L'Orfeo (review)

Joachim Schlömer's production of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo transforms this oldest of performed operas into a strikingly contemporary series of stage pictures. This intriguing production with a distinctly postmodern sensibility illustrates why the Stuttgart Opera has received "Opera House of the Year" honors from German opera critics in four out of the last five years.

Postmodernism rejects grand narratives, and Schlömer eschews presenting an overarching interpretation of L'Orfeo. The production relies instead on numerous small moments and interpretive touches to pique and hold the audience's interest. La Musica's (Irene Bespalovaite) initial appearance dressed in a short pink saddle skirt and bearing a 1950s style gramophone suggests that this production will have a contemporary perspective. The beach-barbeque setting of the wedding celebration for Orfeo (Kobie van Rensburg) and Euridice (Jacquelyn Familant) in act 1 confirms it. The chorus of Ninfe e Pastore dance, flirt, play blind-man's bluff, and eat bratwurst from the grill. Even their costumes have an aspect of pastiche, combining contemporary elements like t-shirts, button-down shirts, and flip-flops with simple white skirts that resemble either togas or waiters' aprons in an Italian restaurant. Ironic touches lend a postmod-ernist sensibility—as when La Messaggiera (Helene Ranada) binges on wedding cake in despair after imparting the news of Euridice's demise. La Esperanza (Frederique Sizaret) looks to be a refuge from Shaw's Major Barbara—she appears dressed as a Salvation Army worker, and her help is not only spiritual but also pragmatic. She provides Orfeo with a thermos full of goulash to help keep his strength up before he attempts to enter the underworld.

Postmodernist performance often creates a cultural bricolage, eliding distinctions between high and low and reveling in referentiality. Schlömer's L'Orfeo similarly plays with allusions to other contemporary performance modes including musicals and action movies, reminding the audience that opera is part of a broader spectrum of cultural production. While dancing for joy at the happiness of Euridice and Orfeo, the chorus of Ninfe e Pastori use their flip-flops as percussion instruments and snap their fingers in a manner reminiscent of musical theatre. The Dryade wears a t-shirt emblazoned with a Japanese anime character. The sparse set composed primarily of wooden bleachers and pillars and topped by a rough wood ceiling evokes a soccer stadium. Perhaps most tellingly, the opera's culminating image, Orfeo's ascent to Mount Olympus, resembles nothing so much as an action film. Apollo (Christian Sökler), dressed in a black skin-tight super-hero style costume, throws a climbing harness down to Orfeo. The audience, at first taken aback, reacts appreciatively when Orfeo does a self-aware little jig before being hauled up by Apollo.

While Schlömer's production does not use other media like film or video in his staging, the emphasis in this production definitely shifts away from music toward visual elements. Excellent musical performances by both the orchestra—including the use of some period instruments—and the entire vocal ensemble, directed by Jean-Claude Malgoire, underscore and complement vivid stage images rather than serve as the production's raison d'etre. La Musica's gramophone also reminds us that music itself is a cultural product. This awareness shapes the entire production; Caronte (Helmut Berger-Tuna) is lulled to sleep not by Orfeo's live performance, but rather by the recorded piece he plays on the gramophone.

Perhaps the most telling example of a shift towards the visual is the addition of the Dryade (Jasna Vinovrski)—a female dancer not in Monte-verdi's original whose expressive movements embody the music and foreground the opera's theatricality. The Dryade appears in nearly every scene and is often an integral part of the action. She dances with Orfeo and the chorus of Ninfe e Pastori in act 1, appears with La Esperanza (whose coat she dons as Orfeo seeks to enter the underworld) and Orfeo in...