Gluck | Orpheus

Orpheus is the founding myth of opera history. Monteverdi was the first to bring it to life, and Gluck would later compose two versions—one in Italian (where the role of Orfeo was sung by a castrato) and one in French (sung by a tenor)—before Berlioz gave it a new vocal and orchestral cloak. Gluck’s versions shook the Enlightenment era, though they suffered from numerous adaptations and revisions over time. In the late 1850s, Berlioz was tasked with reworking the piece for Pauline Viardot, the singing star of the era, renowned for her vocal range that easily spanned from contralto to soprano. Berlioz kept the French score but transposed the tenor part into a range suited to Viardot and adjusted the keys, notably to adapt them to the instruments of his time.

It is this 19th-century version that Speranza Scappucci and Les Siècles—an ensemble specialized in historically informed performance and well-versed in the Berlioz repertoire—bring to us today. To stage this allegory of music and poetry, American director Ted Huffman, recently appointed director of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, will use his sense of minimalism to delve into the depths of this intimate drama. And who better than an artist of Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s caliber to carry this operatic myth, joined by the young Lauranne Oliva, already sought after by all the great European stages.

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