Orphée

Orphée Hector Berlioz - Christoph Willibald Gluck Gluck's masterpiece in Berlioz's version.

Cast

Speranza Scappucci | conductor

Ted Huffman | stage direction, set design, costumes

Bart Van Merode | set design

Sonoko Kamimura | costumes

Pim Veulings | movement

Bertrand Couderc | lighting

Marie-Nicole Lemieux | Orphée

Lauranne Oliva | Eurydice

Camille Chopin | Amour

Les Siècles

Chœur du Concert Spirituel | chorus master Hervé Niquet

In a few words

Orphée is the foundational myth in the history of opera. Monteverdi first brought it to life, Gluck composed two versions, one in Italian (where the role of Orfeo was sung by a castrato) then in French (by a tenor), before Berlioz gave it a new vocal and orchestral guise. Gluck's versions revolutionised Enlightenment Europe but suffered over time from numerous adaptations and corrections. In the late 1850s, Berlioz was entrusted with the task of revising the work to adapt it for Pauline Viardot, a singing star of the era renowned for her vocal range, easily moving from contralto to soprano. Berlioz retained the French score but transposed the tenor voice into a tessitura suitable for Pauline Viardot and harmonised the tonalities, notably to adapt them to the instruments of his time. It is this 19th-century version that Speranza Scappucci and Les Siècles, an ensemble specialising in historically informed performance and well-versed in the Berlioz repertoire, offer us. To stage this allegory of music and poetry, American Ted Huffman, recently appointed director of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, will, with his sense of minimalism, delve deep into this intimate drama. And who better than an artist of Marie-Nicole Lemieux's 'calibre' to carry this operatic myth aloft, alongside the young Lauranne Oliva, already courted by all the major European stages.

Co-production Théâtre des Champs-Élysées | Dutch National Opera | Musik