Orphée et Eurydice

[fidelioscabinet]

What the Netflix blurb has to say:"Robert Wilson directs this 1999 French adaptation of Christoph Willibald Gluck's 1762 opera, starring Magdalena Kozená and Madeline Bender in the title roles and with John Eliot Gardiner conducting. Minimalist in style, this production has become renowned for its combination of a supremely talented cast, spare

Comments

[fidelioscabinet]

The snark in me is inclined to say it would have to be better live, because Wilson keeps getting work, but I can see how it would indeed make a difference--just having living, breathing performers always adds electricity to things, and it helps not being tied to a camera's specific viewpoint--they always go in on the soloist, so you lose track of what else might be happening, and this is a production where you really need to see the big picture to get a good effect--otherwise you're staring at a blue person singing very beautifully. There's a certain sort of understatedness which just doesn't work too well on a screen of any size, and I think this production has it in spades. There are moments where, on television, it slides past hypnotic and into stupefying.

I think I'd have like this with a countertenor as well--Kozená has a beautiful voice, and pretty good volume, but there's a little extra oomph with a countertenor. Also, this production tended to seem a bit on the asexual side, and a male presence and voice would have helped there a bit, at any pitch. I rented a DVD of Giulio Cesare with Graham Pushee* as Caesar a few years back, and it made a significant difference having a man in that role--not that Janet Baker (for example) was bad in the role, just not quite the same.

*They had fun with the staging--there was a point where (in late 18th-century greatcoat, á la Napoleon) Caesar took up a pose like Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, with his back to the audience, all contemplative and broody.