4 times Orpheus and a trans baritone in ENO’s season
mainEnglish National Opera will stage four versions of the Orpheus myth next year, plus three more new productions.
– Choreographer Wayne McGregor will direct Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice (1762), with Dame Sarah Connolly and Sarah Tynan;
– Emma Rice directs Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (1858), with Sir Willard White as Jupiter and transgender baritone Lucia Lucas as Public Opinion, her first major UK role;
– ENO music director Martyn Brabbins brings back Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus (1986), directed by ENO artistic director Daniel Kramer;
– Netia Jones will direct Philip Glass’s Orphée (1991);
– Barbora Horáková will direct Verdi’s Luisa Miller;
– Joe Hill-Gibbins directs Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.
– German director Tatjana Gürbaca undertakes Dvorak’s Rusalka.
And the good news is:
‘ ENO music director Martyn Brabbins brings back Birtwistle’s The Mask of Orpheus (1986)’
But the bad news is that it’s:
‘ directed by ENO artistic director Daniel Kramer ‘
Kramer cannot direct traffic. With all the top-flight opera directors Britain has (R Jones, D Warner, K Warner, T Albery, P McDermott, Improbable, etc) they’ve entrusted this complex masterpiece to a clueless bodger.
There’s a great put down in the Spectator review of ‘Jack the Ripper’: ‘Director Daniel Kramer rises to new heights with a competent production’.
Right on!
Interesting season in which I predict one turkey of a production.
Actually make that two turkeys. One by Daniel Kramer and the other by Joe Hill-Gibbins.
Only one? At least Kramer has discovered that Verdi composed more than one opera!
Brave season. Make or break? There’s some expensive and not particularly box-office-friendly stuff there. Could be very interesting and enjoyable though.
Orpheus in the Underworld…. From the ENO season announcement
“Freely adapted from the original French by Emma Rice and Tom Morris”
After her resounding impact at the Globe what could possibly go wrong?
Kramer and Rice. A match made in Hades.
Well, it can’t be worse than Pountney’s woebegotten staging of Orpheus in the Underworld, which was as funny as root canal dentistry. Let’s be thankful it’s not among the other veteran dross they’re dusting off for this season? 😉
“No, it’ll be funny, because he’s wearing a t-shirt which says “Orpheus In His Underwear. Ha-ha!”.
(in tiny writing which couldn’t even be read from Row 3 of the stalls anyhow).
Presumably Kramer does not realise that Offenbach composed more than one stage work!
They’re going to have to hire extra ushers to stop people dancing in the aisles during the Mask of Orpheus.
Kramer (Zzzzz) directing Birtwhistle’s Mask Of Orpheus (ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz). It was horrendous Emperor’s new clothes first time around, so add Kramer to the mix, what could possibly go wrong?
Check the attendance figures for when MofO was given a concert perf at the Proms? Even the Arena and Balcony sold out.
Fantastic to see the return of the Mask of Orpheus, which I saw three times during its first run.
Is there anyone left to produce these operas? With the loss of a talented veteran producer, (credit for Porgy should have gone to her), her assistant producer, and even her replacement, along with around 12 of their colleagues, the new CEO is struggling to recruit and retain talent
Lets hope the production team for Offenbach’s Operetta, Orpheus, doesn’t try to make it as cheap, naff, disrespectful to the genre as recent embarrassing, pantomime operetta’s Iolanthe, & The Merry Widow have been of late…..
Such ‘team’ clearly don’t realise, ENO (as Sadler’s Well’s Opera) cut it’s teeth on legendary productions of operetta, stylistically, and brilliantly produced in the 1960’s, without the cheap dumbing down and disrespect of the pieces the production ‘team’ seem to think acceptable as the only way to introduce audiences these days to the repertoire of ENO… (the Colliseum of which is too big for operetta anyhow..)
Pity Orpheus is the only Offenbach ENO seem aware of.
He did write quite a few more (over 100) which would be more challenging to produce…