Director Robert B. Driver and conductor Corrado Rovaris chose the French Orphée et Eurydice, composed by Gluck and edited by Hector Berlioz into four short acts, played without an intermission.
Now my two cents about the Opera: Having had past experience with the OCP's production (Ginanni Schicici)last year, I am not unfamiliar with the director's minimalist sense of design. Although I had never seen the opera live before, merely knowing the plot (not the Gluck's plot) gave a lot of room for imagination and speculation of how OCP plan to show this mythological, sensual, and potentially heart breaking opera to the audiences. I never quite liked boxy, linear stage designs, it tends to limit my focus almost compulsively, forces me to look at the edge , as suppose allowing my eyes to flow around-like an awkward composition in a painting. However, the "boxy" design worked quite nicely in this piece, allowing the tilted stage to be lit from several directions at once. The light effect, was magnificent. Lighting was an indispensable part of the opera, as it provided so much atmospheric elevation for the singers. At one point, as Orphee descends to "the land of dead", mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose actually came flying down on invisible cables! Tobe continued...
