I think the first question we have to ask is, just what the HELL is going on with her face in that picture? She appears to be cross-eyed with a giant, cartoon nose. Please rest assured that that is never the case in the actual opera, at least as here produced.
This is actually kind of historical: with this, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, and the upcoming Hamlet, this year's Met on Demand series features three contemporary operas, a first. Only one previous season has even included two (in 2011-12 they did Satyagraha and The Enchanted Island, if you even want to count the latter baroque pastiche as a contemporary piece). This is really cool, and it's definitely due to the influence of Yannick Nézet-Séguin who, as I understand, is known for championing new operas. An excellent trend. He's an improvement on every possible level over Levine. I mean, assuming he doesn't have deep dark secret of his own. Don't break my heart, Nézet-Séguin!
Well, this is more or less the normal Orpheus story, albeit--obviously--from Eurydice's perspective, more or less. She's getting married to Orpheus; at the same time, her dad in Hades--who still remembers her on account of not being exposed to too much Lethe water--is writing her a letter. On the day of her wedding, she meets a sleazy dude, who turns out to be Hades, who lures her to his apartment by saying he has this letter (which he does) and then trying to seduce her. But she falls and dies somehow; don't worry about it. Orpheus goes after her and blah blah; ultimately, of course, he looks and she has to go back, only her dad--who had urged her to go--apparently couldn't take her being gone and bathed himself in Lethe water. So she follows suit and no one remembers anything and when Orpheus comes he's, like, sad. Okay.
One interesting thing the opera does is give Orpheus a "shadow double" meant to represent his music. Since he also sings himself, I'm not sure how this works conceptually, but it's interesting to hear the baritone and countertenor harmonizing. The music in general is pretty good; the most obvious touchstone seems to be Wagner. There's a bit of playing around with serialism. It's pretty much fine.
But I don't know...the reason I took so long to write this after seeing the opera was on accouna not being altogether sure what to think, and the more I DO think about this, the less impressed I am. The libretto sometimes seems a bit too cutely self-aware for my tastes, and some of it seems kind of ungainly, like it wasn't really altered sufficiently from the original non-musical play. I don't regret seeing it (I don't think I've ever "regretted" seeing an opera, even the few I've hated, so what does THAT mean?), but I sure don't think I'll ever feel the urge to revisit it. If Fire Shut Up in My Bones felt like it was for the ages, this one feels eminently disposable, with no disrespect to Aucoin intended. But I still really, really want to see Jacopo Peri's Euridice. Why did we all collectively decide to pretend that Monteverdi's Orfeo is the oldest surviving opera? I don't get it!
I also want to note that, as the host, Renée Fleming egregiously mispronounces "Eurydice" in a way that's not only unlike the English pronunciation used in this opera, but really unlike any language I've heard. Walk away Renée!
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