By Paul A. Sayegh Virginian-Pilot correspondent
Norfolk, VA, September 30, 2015 – Virginia Opera kicked off its season in high style with French composer Jacques Offenbach’s rowdy 1858 operetta “Orpheus in the Underworld,” given in an English translation by Jeremy Sams.
Eschewing the usual serious fare that is the stuff of opening nights, the company opted for a bawdy send-up of the mythical inhabitants of Mount Olympus. Updating the work to a more contemporary setting, director Sam Helfrich maintained the spirit of the original and showed with hilarious results that sex, self-inflation and power are always fair game for satire.
Andrew Lieberman’s set was dominated by a stage-high painting of a young woman smoking a pipe. This image was varied at times by curtains, as well as a long table around, under and on top of which much of the action transpired. Kaye Voyce’s costumes were contemporary, and delineated the mortals from the Olympians mainly in terms of lots of glitter for the latter.
Helfrich created a lively set of characters – from the frustrated Orpheus and his spirited wife, Eurydice, to the sometimes trashy gods who are bored silly with their privileged lives.
Eurydice is not the loving wife of legend, she’s a frustrated woman who can’t stand her violinist husband (or his playing – despite the fact that, ironically, he plays very beautifully) and has taken up with a shepherd, who is actually the god Pluto in disguise.
Add in Jupiter, who wants Eurydice for himself, and the rest of the gods, who want to have a good party, and the story moves along swiftly.
Offenbach’s score provides the basis for all this, and it was cared for quite well by conductor Anne Manson and the Richmond Symphony musicians in the pit. This was a swift and animated reading of the work, one of Offenbach’s most memorable, including as it does the famous “Can-Can” as well as passing references to Gluck’s “Orfeo” and the “Marseillaise,” which is quoted when the gods threaten to revolt against Jupiter.
The large cast was a well-balanced ensemble. Meredith Lustig’s Eurydice was coy and seductive, her soprano warming up considerably as the evening progressed.
The two opposed gods, tenor Daniel Curran as Pluto and baritone Troy Cook as Jupiter, were well matched, their attractive voices adding to their god-like allure. As Orpheus, tenor Javier Abreu’s voice was more slender, but he captured the leading character’s marital ambivalence well. Among the others, special mention should be made of Brian Mextorf’s lovelorn John Styx, Kyle Tomlin’s hilarious Mercury, and Molly Hill’s lusty Venus.
All told, it was a pleasant and entertaining way to spend a couple of hours, in the company of some very talented singers and a great composer who doesn’t always get his due for what he did extremely well.