Is the mystery of love greater than the mystery of death?
Conductor: STEVEN JARVI Stage Director: SAM HELFRICH
Performed in French with English Supertitles
Study Guides
Historical Background
Virginia Opera features a free pre-opera presentation available before the opera by Dr. Glenn Winters, Virginia Opera's Community Musical Outreach Director.
Dr. Winters' presentation begins 45 minutes before curtain.
Running time approx: 2:13
Performances will be presented with one intermission.
Rooted in ancient Greek lore, this operatic thriller follows the psychological journey of famous poet Orphée as he comes to fixate on a mysterious woman with dark origins. Obsession consumes him until he leaves the reality of his life with his wife, Eurydice, for a desperate odyssey to the Underworld. Can true love lead Orphée back, or will he be lost to his obsessions?
Composer Philip Glass' (The Hours, The Illusionist) entrancing music follows the script of Jean Cocteau's 1949 film Orphée.
Orphée
Opera by Philip Glass
Based upon the Scenario of Jean Cocteau
(Copyright 1993 Dunvagen Music Publishers, Inc. Used by Permission.)
The scenery and costumes were originally constructed for Glimmerglass Opera.
Orphée, a poet at the height of his celebrity, sits with a friend watching as a crowd of admirers gathers around Cégeste, a rising younger poet. The friend points out Cégeste’s patroness, a mysterious figure known as the Princess. A melee erupts around the drunken Cégeste who, darting into traffic, is struck and killed by two motorcyclists. The Princess imperiously commands Orphée to assist her chauffeur Heurtebise in removing the body.
On a lonely country lane, the Princess rebuffs all of Orphée’s questions. In time, the motorcyclists arrive and take away the corpse. All parties arrive at the Princess’s chalet, with Orphée unsure if he is awake or dreaming. Strange words are heard on a radio, after which Cégeste arises upon a word from the Princess. “Do you know who I am?” she asks. “My death”, he answers, and they pass through a tall mirror. Heurtebise, declining to explain, leads Orphée away.
At Orphée’s home, a worried Eurydice discusses her husband’s disappearance with the Commissioner and her friend Aglaonice. A reporter, hoping to ask Orphée about yesterday’s accident, is sent away. Orphée enters; Heurtebise follows bearing a radio. The poet, upset to see the policeman and Aglaonice, orders them out; the Commissioner asks Orphée to report to him the following morning. Agitated and uncommunicative, Orphée retreats into his study, leaving Eurydice with the chauffeur. Eurydice frets that she was unable to tell Orphée important news: she is pregnant. She invites Heurtebise to remain with her while he awaits orders. Turning off a gas stove, Heurtebise explains that the smell of gas reminds him of his death.
Later, as Orphée sleeps, the Princess enters silently and watches.
Eurydice finds her patience worn thin as Orphée, oblivious to her pregnancy, is fixated on the radio, carefully writing down coded messages. Heurtebise reminds Orphée of his appointment with the Commissioner. Before leaving he apologizes to his wife for his behavior.
At the station, a group of poets have evidence that Orphée may have murdered Cégeste, but are turned away. They threaten to seek their own justice. On his way to the station, Orphée espies the Princess and begins to pursue her as he himself is chased by autograph hounds. Seeking refuge from them, Orphée ends up back at his home, where Heurtebise remains. The poet returns to his vigil at the radio while Eurydice, now awake, prepares to visit Aglaonice despite Heurtebise’s warnings to stay. Eurydice is run down by motorcycles; the chauffeur carries her back to her bedroom, where Cégeste and the Princess enter from the mirror. At her bidding, Cégeste transmits messages into a microphone, which Orphée writes down. Heurtebise goes to warn Orphée that his wife is dying, but is ignored. Eurydice awakens and acknowledges the Princess as her death, pledging obedience and following her through the mirror. Heurtebise informs the grief-stricken Orphée that his wife is dead. Explaining that mirrors are the passageway for death, Heurtebise suggests that Orphée follow him to the other world. Orphée, declaring he wants both death and his wife, passes through the mirror.
ACT II.
The chauffeur and the poet journey to the underworld, and watch as Cégeste is questioned by a panel of judges and then led away. The Princess is brought in, accused of taking Eurydice without authorization, and then Heurtebise and Orphée are questioned as witnesses. The Princess admits to loving the poet. Eurydice is brought in; Heurtebise is compelled to admit his love for her as well.
Left alone for a moment, Orphée and the Princess embrace, declaring their love as they mull the consequences of her disobedience. The judges return and Orphée receives the judges’ verdict: he and Eurydice may return to their world, provided that Orphée never look at her again. Heurtebise leads them back.
When they arrive home, Orphée receives a letter accusing him of theft and murder. Eurydice struggles to remain out of Orphée’s sight while the three converse about how to cope with this inconvenience. In frustration, Orphée turns to his radio to listen for more codes. When Eurydice joins him, he turns to face her. In a moment, she is gone, just as an angry mob gathers outside demanding justice for Cégeste. In the ensuing struggle, a gun goes off; Orphée falls. The motorcyclists lead Orphée through the mirror before police can intervene. Heurtebise follows.
Orphée is reunited with the Princess, pledging never to leave her again. But, as he falls into a dreamlike state, she bids Heurtebise lead him back to his world for good.
Eurydice awakens to find Orphée sitting beside her; he appears to be unaware of all that has occurred. They chat happily about their coming child. The Princess bids farewell to Cégeste and Heurtebise as she is led away to her punishment.
About the Composer
Philip Glass(1937-present)
Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble, and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie, Philip Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times.
The operas – “Einstein on the Beach,” “Satyagraha,” “Akhnaten,” and “The Voyage,” among many others – play throughout the world’s leading houses, and rarely to an empty seat. Glass has written music for experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures such as “The Hours” and Martin Scorsese’s “Kundun,” while “Koyaanisqatsi,” his initial filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio and the Philip Glass Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since “Fantasia.” His associations, personal and professional, with leading rock, pop and world music artists date back to the 1960s, including the beginning of his collaborative relationship with artist Robert Wilson. Indeed, Glass is the first composer to win a wide, multi-generational audience in the opera house, the concert hall, the dance world, in film and in popular music -- simultaneously.
He was born in 1937 and grew up in Baltimore. He studied at the University of Chicago, the Juilliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud. Finding himself dissatisfied with much of what then passed for modern music, he moved to Europe, where he studied with the legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger (who also taught Aaron Copland , Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and worked closely with the sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar. He returned to New York in 1967 and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble – seven musicians playing keyboards and a variety of woodwinds, amplified and fed through a mixer.
The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.
There has been nothing “minimalist” about his output. In the past 25 years, Glass has composed more than twenty operas, large and small; eight symphonies (with others already on the way); two piano concertos and concertos for violin, piano, timpani, and saxophone quartet and orchestra; soundtracks to films ranging from new scores for the stylized classics of Jean Cocteau to Errol Morris’s documentary about former defense secretary Robert McNamara; string quartets; a growing body of work for solo piano and organ. He has collaborated with Paul Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Yo-Yo Ma, and Doris Lessing, among many others. He presents lectures, workshops, and solo keyboard performances around the world, and continues to appear regularly with the Philip Glass Ensemble.
Photo credit Steve Pyke.
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Norfolk, VA View Pricing January 28, 2012, 8:00 pm February 1, 2012, 7:30 pm February 3, 2012, 8:00 pm February 5, 2012, 2:30 pm
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