Live, Video: Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | English | Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld)

A touring show on a frugal budget, but Opera Zuid's take on Offenbach's diabolical delights hits the spot in burning temperatures in the Netherlands. 

The Salzburg Festival's production of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld is another classic in the making from Barrie Kosky.

Oper Köln’s Orpheus in the Underworld proved age accessibility must not sacrifice humour and musical integrity. The tight ensemble piece was superbly acted and well-sung throughout.

Prague's National Theater wraps its season with a wickedly funny revival of Offenbach's audacious operetta.

“Folies Bergère does Greek gods” is how director Martin Duncan describes Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers, and his production for Royal Academy Opera is enormous fun. 

In his director’s note, Jonathan Biggins writes, ‘All I can hope for is that you go out of the theatre feeling a bit more cheerful than when you came in’. If that was the opera’s aim, then few could claim that it was not successful in achieving it. The ABC’s Limelight magazine describes the production as ‘a razor sharp, satirical romp that’s camper than a row of tents and twice as funny’.

It has suddenly become bitterly cold in Oxford, so scuttling the hundred yards or so from where I live to the Sheldonian Theatre, along with having to rush my dinner, saw me in a foul mood at eight o’clock this evening when Ben Holder strode onto stage to conduct New Chamber Opera in Orpheus in the Underworld, Offenbach’s comic operetta in two acts.

Scottish Opera and Northern Ireland Opera's new version of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld has been touring Scotalnd and Northern Ireland: it's now arrived in London for a short run at the Young Vic in London, in its 150-seater Maria hall alongside the main theatre.

If anyone tells you that all opera is highbrow, Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld provides you with a perfect example of the opposite. It's coarse, raunchy, fast, fun, and continually pokes fun at the conventions of grand opera.