Whatever the casual Edinburgh International Festival opera-goer expects from this new production of Gluck’s 18th century work is likely to be blown away by what they witness. Produced in conjunction with Opera Queensland, it features dramatic, haunting music from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, with Iestyn Davies in the role of a troubled, fitful Orpheus, unable to move on from his beloved Eurydice’s death.
Twenty-six black-clad members of the Scottish Opera Chorus also feature, proceeding like a funeral cortege and lining the walls of director Yaron Lifschitz’s stark, rectangular room of a set, an antiseptic space reminiscent of a mental health institution. Yet it’s the presence of 10 members of Lifschitz’s Brisbane-based circus theatre company Circa which elevates a powerful production into a uniquely unmissable one.
The addition of circus to opera is no gimmick. Rather, Circa’s dancers bring the expressive physical precision of ballet alongside the apparently death-defying danger of top-level circus performance. At one point a tower of three people on each other’s shoulders topples – intentionally – to the ground, drawing gasps from the auditorium; at another, a dancer climbs a staircase of people, spreading into the splits between the foreheads of the two tallest men.
As Orpheus seeks his love in the underworld, a red dress signifies Eurydice has appeared – first on the dancer ‘falling’ from circus silks in the opening scene, then on soprano Samantha Clarke, with a performance of crystal emotional clarity in one of her two roles, then finally on all five female dancers as they assail Orpheus. Truly unforgettable.
Orpheus and Eurydice, Edinburgh Playhouse, run ended