Orphée

by Philip Glass

seen at the London Coliseum on 20 November 2019

ENO are presenting four Orpeus related operas this season; this is the fourth that I have seen. Netia Jones directs and Geoffrey Paterson conducts Philip Glass's opera inspired by (and using the dialogue of) Jean Cocteau's 1950 film of the same name, with Nicholas Lester as Orphée, Sarah Tynan as Eurydice, Jennifer France as the Princess, Nicky Spence as Heurtebise and Anthony Gregory as Cégeste. The production, like the others in the series, is designed by Lizzie Clachan, with the costumes and video projections designed by the director.

Philip Glass chose to use all the dialogue from Cocteau's film; as I have not seen the film I cannot coment on whether the opera as staged closely reflects the film itself (I rather think some extraneous elements have been added, as there are some non-singing parts named as Glass himself, Cocteau and the photographer Lucien Clergue).

The story is set in contemporary Paris, where Orphée is an established poet and Cégeste a younger rival who, early in the piece, is killed in a road 'accident' engineered by two motorcyclists. Bizarrely, Orphée is invited by Cégeste's mysterious patron the Princess to accompany the body - and the motorcyclists - not to a hospital, but to her mansion, where he apparently sees the young poet resurrected. The traditional Orpheus myth is invoked later when Eurydice is killed by the motorcyclists, but not before Orphée has become enamoured of the Princess, while her assistant Heurtebise has fallen for Eurydice. Heurtebise invites Orphée to follow him through a mirror to rescue Eurydice. In the Underworld, a strange ghostly place, it is revealed that the Princess is in fact Death, and she has taken Eurydice without authority; Eurydice is released under the familiar condition that Orphée does not look at her; but this is extended into their daily living, and in this version Eurydice is well aware of th prohibition. Of course it proves impossible to fulfil, and she collapses. The Princess arranges for time to be reversed so that Orphée and Eurydice are alive again, apparently unaware of all that we have witnessed, while the Princess and Heurtebise are led away in the Underworld.

With Glass's typical minimalist lines of music, and the peculiar version of the story, with the complications introduced by the characters of the Princess and Heurtebise, we are in a very strange place. Other people on stage are often silent, and emblematic of people outside the main story, especially the figures in the Underwold, including a strange upright horse-like figure not unlike a Knight chess-piece. There are strains in the marriage of Orphée and Eurydice, though not so extreme as in Birtwistle's The Mask Of Orpheus, but there is also a mordant comedy in the scenes in which they try to live together without Orphée looking at his wife. The most moving scene showed the Princess willing her own destruction by forcing Heurtebise to initiate the process of reversing time and releasing Orphée from the whole situation; as sung and acted by Jennifer France this was the emotional high point of the evening.

But the whole production, enigmatic but compelling, was a fine contribution to a rather mixed collection of Orpheus operas. It is to be wondered why Monteverdi's version as not included.