O+E Chamber Opera by Seattle Opera

Some people listen to opera for that one perfect high C, but my ear is not refined enough to detect the subtler wonders of the art form. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m drawn to opera for the spectacle. Seattle Opera’s newest chamber opera, O+E, was the opposite of their over-the-top main stage productions, and as a result, I liked it even better. Even without a single baritone.

Opera: come for the pageantry, stay for the beauty.

Chamber Opera

In recent years, Seattle Opera has started doing a lot of things to move past opera stereotypes and make the artform accessible to a broader audience. One of the biggest has been their chamber opera program. They are helping to expand the canon beyond centuries-old tales of nobles behaving badly by producing English-language stories about important contemporary issues. Last fall I attended American Dream, about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Besides this one dealing with race, they have also produced chamber opera that addressed religious prejudice and one that told the story of a transgender woman.

The chamber operas are only one act with no intermission, so they last about an hour and a half instead of three hours – important for audiences who are not already committed to classical music. They are always presented in alternative venues, which allows the company to keep ticket prices low (and kind of adds to the hipness factor).

Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice

Unlike other chamber operas SO has produced, this one is not a commissioned new work. It is a new production of a classic opera, Orpheus and Eurydice, by Christoph Gluck. It premiered in Vienna in 1762 with an Italian libretto, obviously based on the Greek myth. It’s hard to imagine a more stuffy, traditional origin story for an opera.

But wait.

Gluck was a rebel in his day. In 1762 he was already pushing back against the ridiculous, overblown plots and excessive pageantry of opera, and was trying to tell simpler, more emotionally resonant stories. He wanted both his singers and dancers (ballet was a common component of opera at the time) to focus on the drama of storytelling rather than showing off their virtuoso moves.

Opera has never been as heteronormative as its stuffy reputation. The original Orpheus was a castrato. After singers stopped having to make that particular sacrifice for their art, Orpheus and Eurydice was usually performed by women. Orpheus was sung as a “pants role” by a female contralto and Eurydice a sung by a femme soprano. In the 20^th century, tenors began to take over the role of Orpheus; the last time Seattle Opera performed Orpheus and Eurydice, tenor Vinson Cole sang Orpheus in French on the mainstage.

Seattle Opera’s O+E

Gluck’s opera is 250 years old, but this production is brand new. It was presented inside the Seattle Opera Studios in a pocket of South Lake Union that looked like old Seattle. Entering through a roll-up door in an anonymous building between a construction site and a condemned building felt more like getting into a secret warehouse party or some underground art project, rather than attending a performance by one of the city’s largest arts organizations.

The setting and costumes are contemporary, rather than mythological. But the story is presented with a sort of magical realism that blurs the distinction between hell as a physical place and hell as the place in our minds where we experience suffering. It’s not entirely clear whether E is already dead at the beginning of the opera (as she appears to be) or if O is mentally preparing herself for E’s death. When O fails to rescue her wife in the underworld, is the arrival of Amore personified a true deus ex machina, or was the surgery always going to happen? There might be right answers to these questions, but they are presented with enough ambiguity to spark impassioned discussions over drinks after the show. In that sense, this production is much more like modern theater than classical opera, which, let’s face it, leans towards spoon feeding.

Performance

Orpheus was sung by German mezzo Magda Gartner in her Seattle Opera debut, replacing the originally cast singer. I don’t know how much preparation she got, but it had to be rough stepping in as a replacement on an Italian opera sung in English. O is onstage for almost the entire 80 minutes. The entire production rests on her shoulders. But Gartner completely inhabited the role. In such a small performance space, singers have to be acting as well as singing. Gartner really made us feel her loss. And she had a great WTF face during the moments when surreal obstacles intruded on her emotional journey. It reassured the audience that she was a real woman, rather an archetypal hero, and made it easier to believe in the rest of her experience.

Local soprano Tess Altiveros had a different challenge, playing dead onstage for a big chunk of the action. But when Eurydice finally does get to sing, oh that golden soprano! She’s a woman worth going to hell for. Like Gartner, Altiveros beautifully balanced singing and acting, really making the audience believe in her love.

Local soprano Serena Eduljee has less scope for emotion in her dual surgeon/goddess role. But her clear, sweet soprano is perfect for personifying love and I hope I see more of her onstage.

Modern Production

This production is modern in many ways. This production is set in a modern hospital, with contemporary clothing and grayscale color palette. The chorus, dressed for a funeral, performs behind a vinyl curtain.

While it returns to the earlier casting tradition of female leads, it allows both singers to present as female. Unlike the original, O+E is an overtly lesbian romance. (Lambert House and LGBTQ Allyship both had information tables at the entry.)

What’s more, stage director Kelly Kitchens (already well-known to theater types) put together an all-female creative crew and primary cast. (Speculating on ethnicity is a risky proposition, but I believe none of the three originally cast stars are WASPs, either). We learn that in life, E was a combat soldier. O faces her fallen comrades (played by silent dancers) when she travels through hell.

Timeless Story

Lucy Tucker Yates translated the opera into English. She did it beautifully – the English libretto is printed in the booklet, and it is very good poetry.

Gods, then! Wherever you’re hiding!

Show your faces you greedy cowards,

You, Reaper, who bear our souls away. Your scythe,

Hungry for its harvest,

Thrust up its blade, struck this precious victim,

Before her hour had come! You stole her from me –

My beautiful Eurydice –

But there are also some wonderful, earthy moments grounding the heady poetry. When O is leading E back from the land of the dead, E is confused by her coldness. Why come all the way to hell if you’re just going to be bossy and won’t even look at the woman you’re trying to rescue? Frustrated, O tells her, “Less talk, more action.” Eurydice has been dead all day and now her wife tells her to be quiet and get a move on. It goes over as well as you’d expect.

Keep quiet! Well, that’s perfect!

Hollywood has programmed us to believe a love story whenever a man and woman are placed in multiple scenes together. Screenwriters don’t even have to write the romance. But O+E takes no lazy shortcuts. Every moment of this opera speaks to the solid reality of this couple’s love, even as the story takes place within the surrealist hell of Orpheus’ dreaming mind.

And in the end, should somebody die?

The first time I saw The Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and Sam look out over Mordor and the end credits started to roll, I shouted at the screen. “What!? No, that’s not an ending!” Folks who knew Tolkien snickered at my shock. At the end of O+E, the surgeon Amore comes out and faces O. Just as she is about to speak, the lights go out. Several people in the audience gasped audibly. But nobody snickered.

Everybody knows from mythology that Orpheus is supposed to lose Eurydice – that’s how stories work. If the protagonist doesn’t lose anything, it’s not a story, it’s just a fantasy. But Amore gave them a second chance – and story structure be damned, it feels right for O and E to be together. We want the fantasy that true love will win. Fiction already has enough dead lesbians. We need O and E to live happily ever after.

Seattle Opera didn’t give us the ending we want, but it didn’t deny us that ending either. I’m going to believe in the happy ending.

Cast

Orfeo (O)              Magda Gartner
Euridice (E)           Tess Altiveros
Amore (A)             Serena Eduljee
Director                 Kelly Kitchens
Music Director       Lucy Tucker Yates
Scenery Designer  Julia Hayes Welch
Costume Designer Chelsea Cook
Lighting Designer  Thorn Michaels
Choreographer      Kathryn Van Meter

Details

Music by Christoph Willibald Gluck

Libretto by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi

English Adaptation by Lucy Tucker Yates

Venue Seattle Opera Studios

Performances: June 2, 3m, 7, 9, 10m, 2018

Approximate Running Time: 80 minutes with no intermission

Buy tickets here.

{I saw O+E compliments of Seattle Opera.}