Mark Morris Stages `Orfeo' With Humor, Big Gestures

This article originally appeared in the Culture section of Bloomberg News on May 4, 2007.

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- Mark Morris may not have been an obvious choice to stage and choreograph the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Gluck's 1762 ``Orfeo ed Euridice,'' which had its premiere Wednesday night at Lincoln Center. The Met has been slow to acknowledge postmodern choreographers. (George Balanchine was the last to try that double role -- in 1953, with ``The Rake's Progress'' -- and the results weren't happy.) For Morris, whose passion for vocal music may even outweigh his love of dancing, the results are strange and beautiful, which is to say typically Morris.

The stage picture, devised by artists previously associated with this choreographer, is strikingly bold, as the Met's proportions demand. Set designer Allen Moyer has constructed a pair of three-tiered shallow arcs that seat the 100-strong chorus, leave a spacious dancing ground in front of them and separate or abut as the action requires.

Isaac Mizrahi has dressed the chorus in what looks like an exotic selection from every opera in the Met repertory. The dancers -- the entire Mark Morris Dance Group plus a few from the Met Opera -- were assigned contemporary casual clothes, as if to underline the fact that love, sorrow and unexpected joy exist in the here and now, not merely in the realm of ancient myth.

Simple Dancing

This is not Morris's first encounter with ``Orfeo ed Euridice.'' An earlier production, with a different design team, was seen in 1996 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The choreography itself is kept very simple, from huge arm gestures in the beginning that echo and amplify Orfeo's yearning lament to the final rejoicing -- a cheeky mix of ballet, folk and sock-hop antics -- when Euridice is firmly fixed once again in the world of the living and her husband's arms. The most noteworthy passage is a triple duet studded with postures of uncanny grace. It's meant to convey to Orfeo that Euridice will be returned to him through the force of love, and it makes that proposition convincing.

David Daniels, the countertenor playing Orfeo, sings with the deeply human quality Morris particularly values. Maija Kovalevska was technically impressive as Euridice, if not emotionally persuasive. Heidi Grant Murphy made a cheerful, unpretentious Amor, as if rescuing troubled lovers from catastrophe were all in a day's work.

Morris's free-wheeling spirit does occasionally get out of hand. Amor, sheathed in a flying harness, is lowered from the skyscraping top of the stage, singing gamely all the while. Orfeo totes a guitar (though he never seems to play it) to substitute for the mythological character's lute. Euridice, who is indeed gorgeous, is gotten up like a trophy wife in a gown sprouting ostrich feathers. ``Orfeo ed Euridice'' is a work of myriad fluctuating moods -- that's an essential part of its poignancy -- but it's hard to imagine it being jokey.

Still, the simplicity and naturalness of Gluck's score, revolutionary in its time, remains profoundly touching today, and James Levine conducted with his customary vitality.

This season's performances of ``Orfeo'' are dedicated to the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who was to have sung the role of Orfeo.

Further performances are scheduled for May 5, 9 and 12 at the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center. Information: +1-212-362- 6000; http://www.metopera.org.

© 2007 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.