Christoph Gluck Orphée et Eurydice opera to libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline. Directed 2018 by Hofesh Shechter & John Fulljames at the Teatro alla Scala. Stars Juan Diego Flórez (Orphée), Christiane Karg (Eurydice), and Fatma Said (L’Amour). Michelle Mariotti conducts the Coro e Orchestra del Teatro alla Scala (Chorus Master Bruno Casoni). Set and costume design by Conor Murphy; lighting by Lee Curran (revived by Andrea Giretti); choreography by Hofesh Shechter. Directed for TV by Tiziano Mancini. Sung in French. Released 2018, disc has 5.0 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
This is a modernized rendition of Gluck’s last version of this opera in French. Richard Lawrence, writing in the May 2019 Gramophone commends Flórez as a “memorable Orpheus, despairing and passionate.” Lawrence goes on to write, “It’s good to have a complete staged version of the masterpiece, which is so much more than just a revision of Orfeo ed Euridice [the Italian version] . Fred Cohn goes overboard in the July 2019 Opera News (page 59) in praising Flóres but he is less enthusiastic about Hofesh Shechter’s choreography that he condemns as a “scrum” consisting of “mannered gyrations.”
Here’s an official trailer from the Teatro alla Scala:
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