Would Gluck have approved? The composer who mocked the excesses of singers and the composers who indulged them in his famous preface to Alceste is here – in Sydney, but previously in Brisbane – given a Gesamtkunstwerk-out by a man of the circus, director/designer Yaron Lifschitz. So total is the acrobatic approach it affects not only the two eponymous singers but the heroic chorus and even the subtitles – which are seen to speak emphatically or to melt away on the stage’s back wall. Only the orchestra resists the madness – playing dynamically or sweetly as required under Dane Lam’s baton.
While Circa Company’s ensemble of ten acrobats seem to constantly fill the mostly bare stage with action that reflects the opera’s emotions, it’s amazing how clearly Christophe Dumaux’s suffering Orpheus emerges from the scrum, even when strapped to a madhouse bed, hung upside down or stepping precariously across a series of bare backs. Wisely, his glorious “Che faro senza Euridice” is uninterrupted by action, sung by a broken man on his knees.
But did it allow him to re-recover his bride from the grips of Elysium? Gluck of course cheated the Gods of the Underworld by creating this loveliest of laments to move the stoniest hearts, especially that of Amore – who, in 1762, brings Eurydice back to life yet again. Lifschitz will have none of it – no fewer than six acrobatic “Eurydices” are turned, embraced and die before Sandy Leung’s heroine meets her fate, Dumaux is strapped down and hauled aloft and the chorus complete the work singing dead on the floor.