Christoph Gluck Orphée et Eurydice opera/ballet production to libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline. Directed and choreographed 2018 by John Neumeier at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Singing stars are tenor Dmitry Korchak (Orphée), soprano Andriana Chuchman (Eurydice), and soprano Lauren Snouffer (Amore [should be Amour, as this is the French version]). Features The Joffrey Ballet (now the official ballet of the Lyric Opera) performing as themselves and the inhabitants of the underworld. Harry Bicket conducts the Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra and Chorus (Chorus Master Michael Black). Sets by Neumeier (assisted by Heinrich Tröger), lighting design by Neumeier (assisted by Chris Maravich), and costumes by Neumeier. Directed for TV by Matthew Diamond; produced by John Walker; executive producer was David Horn. Sung in French. Released 2019, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: B+
Gluck’s relatively simple opera libretto and music encourages extensive embellishment with dancing and updated plot elements. Still, making a video of this is a daunting task. If you stress the dancing, your video must compete with the sublime Pina Bausch Orpheus und Eurydike show made at the Paris Opera Ballet — perhaps the finest dance video ever made. If you come up with a clever story line, you run into the engrossing movie the Alagna brothers made of Orphée & Eurydice.
Subject title is directed by total-control Neumeier, who is the greatest modern narrative choreographer. So we are not surprised this received show rapturous praise by critics in Chicago who saw it live. But, alas, a fine stage production doesn’t automatically turn into a great video.
In our first screenshot below, meet Orphée, standing center in the black pants, who is a choreographer working on his new ballet called The Isle of the Dead. Orphée is played by the famous Russian tenor, Dmitry Korchak. Dmitry will more than earn his fee singing beautifully all the way through plus he will also do a tiny bit of dancing. In the center is the male dancer Temur Suluashvili and the female dancer Victoria Jaiani being instructed by Orphée. Temur and Victoria are in fact both from Tbilisi and married. Although we never really learn anything about The Isle of the Dead, it will be become apparent that this couple of dancers married in real life are the alter-egos of Orphée and Eurydice. So what we have here is a brace of real lovers, in a ballet about lovers, in a ballet about lovers. Eat your heart out, Hamlet!
Orphée has a production assistant played by soprano Lauren Snouffer who is, of course, the Amour character in Gluck’s opera. Below Amour holds a copy of the famous The Isle of the Dead (or Toteninsel in German) painting by the Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin. This image may be a bit of a cliché in Europe, where copies of The Isle of the Dead hung somewhere on a wall in innumerable households, a bit like prints from Norman Rockwell or Thomas Kincade (the “Painter of Light”) are often seen in American homes. (I wonder if the copyrights to Böcklin’s image recently ran out.) Neumeier’s use of this image is apt since Orphée will soon be looking for the Stairway to Hell:
Next below we meet Eurydice, played by soprano Andriana Churchman. She is Orphée’s wife and star ballerina. She’s late for rehearsal, and when a fight erupts with her husband, she smacks him good to the astonishment of the other dancers standing around. Would it be easier to get a singer to dance or a dancer to sing? Andriana doesn’t have that lean and hungry look of female dancers, but she will manage to scamper about Elisyum pretty well for some seconds. The Lyric Opera has an fabulous chorus, so there was no need ask dancers to sing:
In the Greek legend, Eurydice dies from a snakebite at her wedding reception. Here she dies in a car wreck. Alas, the Alagna brothers already killed Eurydice this way in their movie, so this makes Neumeier look like a copycat. And the props department at Chicago let Neumeier down with this shabby scene of a junk car rolled out on a platform (wheels on wheels) with Eurydice lying in an impossible position. Possibly this worked OK on a dark stage, but this is not acceptable in a video:
Orphée is inconsolable as Eurydice wanders about as a shade under a bridal veil. The set and props here are not very convincing:
The show must go on. The assistant has figured out a way to recall Eurydice from the underworld, but the terms are onerous!
In the legend, Orphée protects himself on entering the underworld by playing his lyre for the Furies and Pluto. Instead of the lyre, Neumeier gives him Eurydice’s red scarf. I have no idea why Churchman is shown below granting Orphée his visa to the underworld:
As Orphée gets closer to the Stairway to Hell, the Furies get increasingly agitated:
Next below is Neumeier’s depiction of the 3-headed Cerberus guard dog with the Furies in the background:
Orphée calms the Furies. There’s nothing very imaginative about Neumeier’s blue lighting for this scene:
In the next shot below, the Furies let Eurydice appear. In this shot you see one of several large reflecting surfaces that appear on the stage. I will not call them mirrors because they constantly shake and distract the viewer by making waves in the reflected images. All this does is to detract from the quality of the show — the Lyric didn’t have the money to spend on real, rigid glass mirrors. Compare what you see below to the huge mirrors displayed in the set of the Vanessa opera recently produced at Glyndebourne. The wonderful Vanessa mirrors both reflect what is happening in front of them and allow what is happening behind the mirrors to show through. During the entire Glyndebourne show there is not the slightest distortion of images passing through the mirrors or being reflected:
Next below is Neumeier’s vision of Elysium. Nothing impressive, but it may have looked OK to the audience with three identical set pieces that can be moved about easily by stagehands. In Elysium the women let down their ballet buns and dance with long hair:
Here’s a near-shot of Churchman and her dancing double, Victoria Jaiani. Churchman’s costume is quite beautiful, but Jaiani looks like she slept last in an alley. This image may also explain why ballerinas like to keep their hair up in the bun:
The costumes of the Blessed Spirits in Elysium maybe looked OK to the audience, but they look horrible to the TV camera in near-shots:
Next below is my favorite image from the disc and my current PC wallpaper — the real life wife and husband (both dancers) on the flanks with the fictional wife and husband (both singers) in the center. Neumeier came up with simple moves that the singers could handle with style while consorting with the Blessed Spirits:
Now we have a really serious spat between husband and wife:
The closer you get to these sets, the more slapdash and cheap they look:
Eurydice has suffered her second death, but her shade still appears from time to time covered by the veil:
To conclude, we see the dress rehearsal (or the premiere perhaps) of the new ballet, The Isle of the Dead. The Assistant sits on a bench in the rear. Orphée was dancing with the shade of Eurydice, but now he holds only her veil. But Eurydice survives in his memory and in his work. Temur and Victoria carry on in the flesh:
Neumeier’s traditional videographer, Thomas Grimm, was not involved with this project. I’ve lamented many times that videos made by Grimm and Neumeier tend to be damaged by the dread disease DVDitis. This diagnosis is based on the insanely fast video pace set by Neumeier and Grimm in their collaborations. I ran the numbers and did a ballet Wonk Work Sheet on two fairly representative segments of subject title. I was delighted to see that videographer Matthew Diamond shoots this with the pace of about 9 seconds for the average video clip. Also, even thought this is a narrative ballet, Diamond gets whole-body views of the dancers in about 60% of his clips. I don’t consider this to be a truly elegant video, but I think it manages to avoid a diagnosis of DVDitis. That’s a huge step forward for Neumeier in making ballet videos that people can easily enjoy.
I’ve been focusing on the dancing and ignoring the fact that this is primarily an opera show with a lot of ballet mixed in. I did state that the three star singers sound and look wonderful in this and they can also act. The Lyric Opera of Chicago has a splendid chorus and the ballet orchestra was fine under Harry Bicket. The PQ and SQ is fine, and the balance between the singers and the orchestra is good.
It takes some work to sort through the angles of Neumeier’s clever, complicated staging, so this would not be a great title to show to newbies. I’ve said enough about weakness in stagecraft fit and finish. Everyone in the ballet corps had to master a lot of material, and there is a lot of pleasing dancing in this show. Still, I got the feeling that many of the dancers could have used yet more rehearsal time in order to show the very best that the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet can do. Let’s hope we will get more opera and dance recordings from the Lyric soon! Grade: B+
Here’s an official trailer from the Lyric Opera:
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