Review: Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (The 2024 Met Opera Production)
For my share of love for opera, I have not dwelled that much into the 18th century, save of course for Mozart’s operas. My thing is for Romantic and 20th century ones. I was recommended to watch Gluck’s most famous work, Orfeo ed Euridice, last Thursday at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. It was an absolute blast for many reasons.
I have not watched an opera live in two years; the last time I watched one was also at the Metropolitan Opera, wherein they featured Verdi’s Don Carlos —my first Verdi opera! It was an amazing production indeed. For my return to New York, a classical opera was needed. Gluck’s work is nearly two hours long in three acts. One thing I would like to point out here is that a substitute conductor was doing the whole thing! Kudos to J. David Jackson for stepping in for Christian Curnyn! A fellow concertgoer told me that it is a thing to have a substitute singer for a show, but not a conductor! Much of my attention was on Jackson as I love the art of conducting and he did a marvelous job. He has a great command of the orchestra and wonderful sense of following the flow of the singers on stage! The main singers, Anthony Roth Costanzo (Orfeo), Elena Villazón (amore), and Ying Fang (Euridice) were all spectacular. Costanzo’s countertenor voice is a legend. In the three premieres during Gluck’s time, the role of Orfeo was done by castrati —boy/male singers with their genitalia cut off to preserve their voices (We obviously do not do that anymore!). This is pretty much the closest thing we can get to it. Fang did a beautiful job of singing and showing her pain to why her Orfeo could not look at her. For much of the time of act 2, I was consistently muttering “do not look!”. I knew the original outcome of the story in Greek mythology, but I still could not help it. Fang showed that hurt while Costanzo did whatever he could to show why he cannot look at her. Villazón as amore provided a sense of comedic relief in this opera seria. She looks like Cupid, and it is funny and awesome. The rest of the cast, the chorus, provides us a potpourri of historical characters that made me curious. They too did a great job as the nymphs and shepherds. I cannot forget the amazing job of the staff off stage that made it possible as well! Costumes were awesome and so was the set.
If the Met Opera decides to produce it again in a future season —this is their 106th performance of it— please do it! It is a short opera relative to the other standards of the repertoire, so it is accessible. You won’t regret it.