Monteverdi’s take on the myth is told through the music of two cultures, says Rebecca Franks
opera
Orpheus
Grand Theatre, Leeds
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improvisatory traditions, emphases on
vocal writing, musical complexity — but in truth it is the contrasts that really tell here. The softer volume of the Indian singers juxtaposed with the open projection of opera, for instance. The sounds, speech patterns and rhythms of different languages: Italian, Hindi and Urdu the main three, but also Malayalam, Bengali, Panjabi and Tamil (surtitles for Striggio’s text are in English). Monteverdi’s Orfeo is a parable on music itself. Orpheus takes it further, exploring the nature of human communication and the liminal space where two worlds meet.
While the overall mood is gentle and Anna Himali Howard’s direction is light-touch, the story’s emotional power never lets up. The love between Orpheus (Nicholas Watts) and Eurydice (Ashnaa Sasikaran) feels real. Silvia (Kezia Bienek) enters holding Eurydice’s red sari, signalling her death, and joy becomes grief. When Orpheus returns from the underworld, turning back to see if Eurydice is following him, thus sealing her fate, there were audible intakes of breath
in the audience. Music gives “peace to sadness”, but Orpheus is a reminder it also gives life to happiness. The musical partnership is a joy.
To October 22, then touring to November 19, operanorth.co.uk
ur scene is a wedding party in the garden of a suburban semi on a cloudy day. There’s beauty to the everyday: plants, balloons,
fairy lights. Guests mingle among two groups of seated musicians. They are celebrating the marriage of Orpheus and Eurydice, figures from Greek myth who inspired Monteverdi to write the first great opera. Here, they also symbolise the union of cultures, brought together by Opera North and South Asian Arts-uk, to tell the legend through western and Indian music.
A risky undertaking? No doubt. Yet as soon as Monteverdi’s music began — the trumpet of the toccata, the strings of the prologue, with theorbo alongside sitar, harp alongside swarmandal (an Indian zither) — so too did an enchantment. This Orpheus has a special magic. Monteverdi’s 1607 score is only half the story; it is not L’Orfeo as it’s been performed before. Instead, Jasdeep Singh Degun, the co-music director with Laurence Cummings, has written Indian classical music that responds to, reflects and riffs on the early baroque, creating something new and beautiful.
Common ground exists — musicologists might point to shared