Brandes Elevates Gluck over Ill-Conceived Staging

Yesterday afternoon at the Bridge Yard, West Edge Opera presented the first of three performances of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, a three-act opera first performed in 1762 with a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi based on the myth of Orpheus, one of the oldest narratives in the history of opera. The staging by KJ Dahlaw could not have been more steeped in the present and may have had something to do with the absence of the names of both composer and librettist in the program book. However, if Gluck was neglected on the stage, he was given more than due compensation from the instrumental and choral ensembles (both performing in front of the stage), conducted by Christine Brandes.

Brandes is probably best known to most readers as a soprano; but, on the basis of yesterday’s performance, her move to conducting has been a fortuitous one. Working with a modest ensemble suitable for the eighteenth-century repertoire, Brandes clearly knew how to bring out the clarity of every instrumental line, consistently blending them into crystalline sonorities. She even seemed to appreciate how both Gluck and the score for this opera play a significant role in music history.

Those who remembers Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus (from either stage or screen) may recall Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart speaking dismissively of Gluck. However, Mozart’s music suggests otherwise. In Gluck’s opera Euridice does not get any substantial singing until the third act, when she takes the failure of Orpheus to look at her as a sign of infidelity. Gluck’s aria emerges as what is easily the most profound character study in the entire opera. In all probably, Mozart appreciated the merits of this opera; and the attentive listener will have no trouble detecting in “Che fiero momento” the seeds of many of the female arias that Mozart would later compose for texts by Lorenzo Da Ponte. That connection could not have been clearer under Brandes’ direction, and its vocal execution by soprano Maria Valdes was one of the few high points of the production.

Orfeo (Nikola Printz) surrounded by dancers (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of West Edge Festival)

The low points, on the other hand, could all be traced back to Dahlaw, whose note for the program book began with the following sentence:

As a queer, non-binary dance artist, I am beyond thrilled to co-create this work that will place women and non-binary artists front and center.

This was clearly a director with an agenda. Sadly, that agenda was fulfilled through a plethora of devices, all of which did little more than distract from both Gluck and Calzabigi. Furthermore, many of those distractions had more to do with Dahlaw’s experience as a “dance artist” than with any fundamental conception of relations between text and music. There were long stretches of “dance art” performed by a corps of seven, none of whom seemed to have a secure connection to the technical foundations of ballet or any of the many different approaches to modern dance. It almost felt as if Dahlaw viewed the presence of Orfeo, Euridice, and Amore (Cupid), the only characters in the libretto, as a waste of both time and space.

As a result, while there is less than two hours of music in Gluck’s score, yesterday’s production felt as if it went on forever. One would have been better off watching Brandes’ conducting work and enjoying the rich blend of instrumental and choral passages. Among the soloists, only Valdes rose above the foolishness on stage. Soprano Shawnette Sulker made the best of bringing Amore into Dahlaw’s muddled dramatic context. Mezzo Nikola Printz, on the other hand, seemed to have consistent difficulty with Gluck’s passages for Orfeo, perhaps distracted from focus on the score by the staging directions.

While it is no longer the eighteenth century, there have been no end of opera productions that have no trouble drawing upon the past as a context for understanding the present. Dahlaw’s approach to Gluck is definitely not one of those productions. The agenda behind this staging should look for a better megaphone elsewhere.