OPERA ORPHEUS & EURYDICE

Opera by C.W. Gluck
directed by Giacomo Ravicchio - musically revisited by Jérôme Baur

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Creation 2019-2020 - Denmark - opera - 1h40 

This opera speaks to us of love, of the human being and his limits. Through the ages. This tale tirelessly conveys these fundamentals that still resonate so strongly in our hearts in the 21st century. This is a "modified reading" of one of the most beautiful mythological stories.

CREDIT

ORFEO ED EURYDICE - GLUCK - 1762
Composer: Christoph Willibald Gluck - Libretto: Ranieri de' Calzabigi

ON STAGE

LYRICAL SINGERS - Josefine Andersson, Berit Barfred Jensen, Lea Quortrup
DANCERS - Mark Philip, Alexander Skjold, Noora Hannula
ACTORS - Elise Müller & Lars Begtrup

ORPHEUS & EURYDICE - 2018

CONCEPT & DIRECTING - Giacomo Ravicchio
DRAMATURGE - Bent Holm
MUSIC COMPOSER, ARRANGER, MUSICIAN - Jerome Baur
CHOREOGRAPHERS - Mark Philip, Noora Hannula
LYRICAL SINGERS LEADER - Merete Svejstrup
PRODUCTION MANAGER - (BÅP) Bert-Åke Persson
VIDEO DESIGNER - Mark O. Viktov
LIGHT DESIGNER - Mikkel Jensen

CHOIR (recorded)
SOPRANOS: Marianne Heuer, Charlotte Meldgård - ALTO: Ulla Kudsk jensen - TENORS: Adam Riis, Steen Nordberg-Nielsen - BASS: Steffen Bruun

MUSICIANS (recorded)

FLUTE & PICCOLO - Clélia Liebermann
OBOE - Karita Troberg
KEYBOARDS, PROG & MIX - Jerome Baur

DIRECTOR ASSISTANT - Line Jakobsgaard Hansen
COSTUMES - Weirdwear
LIGHTING TECHNICIAN - Miki Skjold
SOUND ENGINEERS (stage) - Henrik Bank, Kristoffer Johansen
TECHNICAL ASSISTANT - Ida Kaspersen
PHOTO & VIDEO (promo) - Mathias Foley
PHOTO POSTER - Martin Mydtskov Rønne

MAKING OF

At the beginning of this project, as a composer "originating" from jazz, world music and film music, opera was for me a foreign, precious and almost inaccessible land.

To date, this is the longest, most complex and most massive musical work I have done in my career as a composer. I am particularly grateful to the director Giacomo Ravicchio for asking me to do it.

”Opera is an act of expression and impression"

For more than a year, I have been exploring "Orfeo ed Eurydice", a work of great beauty composed by Cristoph Willibald Gluck almost three hundred years ago. I have tried to express it with my sensibility, with the eyes of my time and to create an immersive musical experience.

Thinking back to the reform initiated by Gluck, I have arranged the music, the songs and the choirs in strict accordance with the story, the astonishing visual creativity and also the modifications made on the original libretto by the Artistic Director Giacomo Ravicchio.

Giacomo Ravicchio has imagined a universe in which the myth takes on a timeless dimension. My exploration unfolded on this thread with on the one hand this timelessness which offers so many possibilities but also imposes a great rigor.

Then there is Gluck's original score, which includes some unavoidable "Hits" as well as some magnificent Recitativi. Without a live orchestra, each piece was a huge and exciting challenge for me.

TECHNICALLY

I made more or less important changes on Gluck's score, which could be either rhythmic changes, or the addition of contemporary harmonies, or the use of other timbres, sound effects and cuts in the structure.

To realize these modifications, I created a completely virtual orchestra that I then conducted on about twenty selected pieces. This virtual orchestra gathers symphonic instruments, contemporary, others without age or coming from distant countries and synthetic sounds.

There is also the use of sounds of everyday objects diverted into musical instruments. I used new sound technologies and my experience as a film music composer to build a sound universe for the show.

"The music of C.W. Gluck is at the intersection of opera and film music."

Gluck and the reform of the Opera that he initiated are, in my opinion, the precursors of film music. The latter has now become an expert in the handling of new sound textures, sometimes "primordial", contemplative, brutal, organic or abstract.

The game of emotions. All these sound inventions offer a new dimension to all the stories told on our screens.
But in the last three hundred years, the expectations of the public have also changed. In fact, several of Gluck's original pieces turned out to be too long for the dramaturgy of Giacomo Ravicchio's show, and for that reason I made many adjustments to the different pieces.

With the help of the Danish dramaturge, Bent Holm, Giacomo Ravicchio rearranged the original order of the music and excluded some of it. This led me to revise a large number of transitions. 

In the context of this opera, I imagined and realized strange sounds that merge within this virtual orchestra. They come to disturb, increase or "dirty" the symphonic writing. The sound design was thus invited in the work of re-sculpting the orchestrations.

These sounds also invite us to travel in time, in space, to the heart of the earth and the drama of "Orfeo and Eurydice". Sometimes placed in the foreground, sometimes in the distance, these additions have allowed me to create reliefs that I have always thought more about the globality of the work than the musical piece in question. Classicism and modernity intertwine to propose this new reading.

Acheter l'album

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