Orpheus. Eurydice. Humor.
People who view the opera as a stuffy place in which elitists hold funny glasses and listen to large women trill in tight clothing will be taken aback by the UI Opera Theater’s new production.
While Jacques Offenbach’s operetta Orpheus in the Underworld premièred in 1858, those involved with this weekend’s production said it has a strikingly modern feel. The show will open at 8 p.m. Friday in the Englert Theatre, 221 E. Washington St.
“Typical opera can be sophisticated, as it should be,” said production director Gary Briggle, who will begin a one-year stint as the UI’s opera director this fall. “Even a comedy is refined, but this is not refined. Even the choreography is very much like a frat-house variety show. It’s a very unusual kind of piece.”
Although the operetta is best known for its cancan music, cast member and UI graduate student Christine Robertson said the narrative — which turns the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice on its head — has enough to keep the audience entertained.
Robertson, who plays Eurydice, describes her character as “the original desperate housewife.” This is due in part to the operetta’s first act, which features protagonists Orpheus and Eurydice in an unhappy relationship. Both characters are cheating on each other — Orpheus with a music student, and Eurydice with Aristaeus, who is the god Pluto in disguise. Orpheus thinks he is safe when Pluto tricks Eurydice into dying so he can ferry her away to the Underworld, but Public Opinion (the character, not a poll) forces Orpheus to go after Eurydice.
When Orpheus goes to Mount Olympus for help, he throws the gods into a frenzy, and they rush down to Hades to rescue Eurydice.
“The show is funny on its own, but its funnier if you’re comparing it to the original myth,” Briggle said. “It truly takes the original myth and turns it inside out.”
The production gets extra zing from its translation, which was first used in 1994 for Lyric Opera Cleveland’s production, in which Briggle played Pluto.
“[Briggle] said he wanted the dialogue scenes to feel like [‘Saturday Night Live]’ sketches,” Robertson said. “Some scenes feel improvised — it might seem to the audience like its careening out of control.”
Other aspects that give Orpheus in the Underworld a modern feel are its choreography and costuming, which combine elements of both classical times and the present.
“It’s a collision of the ancient and modern,” Briggle said. “The general silhouette will remind people of ancient Greece, but we have Hawaiian shirts, evening gowns, and provocative Victoria’s Secret outfits, because this is a saucy, risqué piece.”
Though she has performed lots of musical theater, Robertson said Orpheus in the Underworld is one of the funniest shows she has worked on.
“You get to do big operatic singing and then turn around and get to be a comedian,” she said.
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