NEW YORK – A journey to hell and again, the Metropolitan Opera’s season-ending efficiency of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “Orfeo ed Eurydice” is a rollercoaster trip.
The “lovely simplicity” which Gluck known as his “magnum opus” in setting the parable of Orpheus (and the “noble simplicity” which the poet Ranieri de Calzabigi equally sought in his textual content) is carried out in each facet of the theatrical efficiency revived by Choreographer Mark Morris. Simply as this 18th-century duo disbursed with the excesses of baroque opera serials, Morris’s manufacturing — which premiered in 2007 — strips down the parable right into a spare conceptualism with repeatedly scheduled dazzling moments. It is a clear, clear, entertaining and sometimes charming manufacturing – the type of considerate, uncluttered opera we may use rather more of.
