Orpheus in the Underworld
Jacques Offenbach (Music)
Hector Crémieux & Ludovic Halévy (Original French Libretto)
Donald Pippin (English Adaptation)
The plights of Orpheus and Eurydice have fascinated audiences from the times of ancient Greeks through the works of Ovid and Virgil up until today’s multiple versions of their ill-fated journey into Hades as told in widely popular stage productions such as Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, and Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown. However, it was Jacques Offenbach in 1858 who turned the tragedy into a lampoon of laughs when he wrote Orphée aux enfers, a romping parody sporting toe-tapping and uplifting music that would become the precursor of later operettas of the like of Gilbert and Sullivan. Taking the original French libretto of Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy, Donald Pippin created a tongue-in-cheek English adaptation inserting many modern references to enhance an already hilarious original book. His Orpheus in the Underworld is now in a laugh-out-loud, titillating, and musically splendid production by the company he founded over forty years ago, Pocket Opera.
In a prim and proper white dress of modern look clutching tightly her clasp purse, a woman of a certain age introduces herself as “Public Opinion” but tell us “at home I’m simply called The Polls.” She explains she is a woman of many faces, showing up “in the strangest places” (“wherever people like to gab”). Her favorite spot is “center stage;” and on this stage she announces she will play “a crucial part in the panorama about to start, to do no less than mold the drama.”
Whether mere mortals, kings and queens, or even the gods, Public Opinion – as we shall soon see – strikes fear among them all. Her target today is Greece’s famed poet and musician, Orpheus, and his young bride, Eurydice. The two have quite fallen out of love, each finding among the fields either a shepherd or a shepherdess much more attracting. When Orpheus mistakens Eurydice for his Amaryllis while Eurydice is among the wheat fields waiting in lust for her Aristeus, the ensuing slew of back-and-forth accusations ends up in a joint decision for a welcomed divorce.
But Public Opinion will not tolerate the land’s most famous teacher of verse and music – not to mention famed violinist – to have marital problems, especially if Orpheus does not want to be “scorned by your colleagues, trounced by your rivals, booed by the public, panned by the critics, forgotten by posterity.” And as we especially know today, Public Opinion leads many in public life to bemoan as does Orpheus, “Bound to Public Opinion, I’m a prisoner without bail.”
As Eurydice in her short cut-offs, sleeveless tee, and high-top tennies, Amy Foote trips and trills spritely and lightly through running rounds of soprano notes that often duet with the echoing flute/piccolo of Diane Grubbe. She sings of her handsome shepherd (“my bouquet”) and warns us, “not a whisper to my husband.” But the violin-playing Orpheus in his golden cape arrives to interrupt her planned rendezvous, hoping to find ears for his latest, two-hour composition.
The full-voiced tenor of Nathanael Fleming rings forth touting his “crowning work of art” while Amy Foote’s Eurydice comically grimaces in expressions uproarious, holds her ears against the “scratching and screeching” tries to distract her hubby with erotic moves, and then weeps to Venus in notes reaching heavenward in high octaves, “Oh deliver me, from my husband set me free.”
With the two agreeing divorce is their only recourse, Orpheus leaves just in time before a frolicking shepherd, Aristeus, makes his way into the field of wheat, singing in beautifully voiced tenor of his bucolic life. Adding a lusty flourish with swinging hips, his gorgeous finale of soprano-like falsetto serves as a capstone to his song of “the rustic life beneath the tree, the life for me.”
But Andrew Metzger’s Aristeus is like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, for this humble-dressed shepherd boy is actually the god of the underworld, Pluto – something he soon reveals with an evil laugh and a swoosh of his clothing to reveal a sexy bod in all-red attire. The ta-da transformation happens just in time for him to lure his Eurydice deep into the wheat, where a viper’s bite sends her to an untimely death and a ticket to join him for an eternity of love in Hades. With a voice fluttering like that of Jeanette McDonald, a quite pleased Eurydice sings of “sweet death … a life reborn.”
When Orpheus welcomes this news and thus his release to pursue his own love affair in the fields, Public Opinion steps in with a finger-pointing, motherly Marcelle Donkers using her mezzo-soprano voice of commanding vibrato to convince Orpheus he must travel to Mount Olympus in order to seek permission to go to hell to retrieve his wife. Reluctantly, Orpheus agrees in full-throated tenor to do what so many have done after him, bow to Public Opinion.
As the venue switches to the heavens, we meet the who’s who among Greek gods and goddesses, all snoozing in boredom in a world where in their sleep, they sing,
“Here on these Olympian heights,
There’s never a damn thing to do.
You folks out there, I warn ya,
Here it’s worse than Southern California.”
(One ascertains the fun of Donald Pippin’s humorous adaptation, clearly grounded from the Bay Area standpoint.)
Among the napping, we meet those returning from a night’s work of love (Daphne Touchais’ heavy-voiced and stoic Venus), of matchmaking (Alicia Hurtado’s youthful-voiced Cupid who is prone to slapstick frivolity), and of wars (Andrew Fellows’ Mars with deep, solid notes full of richness). As the clarion baritone of Jupiter (Erich Buchholz) summons his slumbering tribe awake, Diana (Abigall Bush) enters with bow and powder horn singing in vibrant, arresting soprano of her own unsuccessful hunt for a lost lover (only to find out that her human lover was turned into a stag by her father who once again was worried about what would happen if Public Opinion got word of his daughter having an illicit affair).
As the harmonious yawns of the heavenly hosts give way to full-awake, a rapidly rhyming, goggled Mercury (Caleb Alexander, quite impressive with his notes of speedy tenor) arrives with another tale of woe from the one who serves double duty as the silver in thermometers and as the swift mail service to the gods. His news is of the earthly doings of Pluto – one more bit of bad news that could potentially lead to bad press releases about Jupiter’s clan. Andrew Metzger’s Pluto once again reigns supreme not just in hell but on Olympus as he uses all his many moves of flirt and flattery along with a tenor that now slides like a roller coaster across the musical scales, hoping to win Jupiter’s blessing instead of his intended curse.
But Jupiter’s woes have just begun. Protest-sign-toting gods have had it with nectar and ambrosia and are going on strike for more “roast beef and beer,” with the heavenly ensemble of siblings singing a flurry of big-sounding harmonies including Cupid’s chorus-piercing soprano, “Rebel against the bullying … Arise, arise.” As is the case in both heaven and later in hell, when the full ensemble takes to song, the sound is full, well-blended, and grand.
So much more frivolity amongst all the troubles of humans and gods is yet to come. Orpheus is soon to arrive on Olympus to plead his case along with a wide-eyed tourist in trail, an awestruck Public Opinion who is so excited to snap selfies with the gods. Soon, everyone is ready to go to hell (so to speak), with a conga-line of gods dancing off to the nether regions to rescue Eurydice while singing a rousing Act One finale of “A change of scene, a change of air … the giddy gods let down their hair.”
Also among the gods is the richly sung soprano of Jupiter’s wife, Juno (Sonia Gariaeff); the melodically protest-leading Minerva (Phoebe Chee); and the ever-happy and a bit looped on his brew, the big-sounding Bacchus (Sam Rubin). Finally, rounding out this stellar-sounding, immensely comedic cast of fourteen is Sidney Ragland, another compelling voice whose John Styx sings a ballad-like, sad story of a king who ends up in an afterlife of servitude to Pluto.
Stage Director Bethanie Baeyen finds a universe of ways to harvest a sky full of laughs that range from silly to slapstick. Daniel Yelen’s props and set pieces elicit their own chuckles as gods lounge in a landscape of white pillows, fluffy cloths, and collapsed columns on Olympus only to plunge into red-and-black hued rocks and flames in hell. Joy Graham Korst has a heyday costuming the gods and mortals with little jokes tucked here, there, and everywhere head-to-toe among the worn threads, even finding ways to insert a little bit of Pride month here and there.
Of the many scenes of hilarity that still find ways for musical excellence to flourish, none is any more unusual and amusing than Offenbach’s inclusion of Jupiter turning himself into a fly in order to enter a keyhole to seduce an imprisoned and very bored (and quite obviously horny) Eurydice. Erich Buchholz – who has already proven his royal rights vocally with resounding notes sung – now flits about winged, “zzzz-ing” in harmony with Amy Foote’s Eurydice, with the violins of Yasushi Ogura and Nicola Gruen joining in the buzzing sounds of two flies flirting.
For all its hilarity, Pocket Opera’s Orpheus in the Underworld production never forgets that Offenbach’s score offers music that is both lyrical and galloping with many opportunities for individual instruments to enhance and interact with the singing voices. Frank Johnson’s duo duties as pianist and music director of the eleven-person orchestra is impressive on all counts.
For anyone like myself who witnesses Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld for the first time, the biggest surprise – beyond how funny is the humor and fabulous is the music of this first, major operetta – is the fact that the rambunctious music of can-can dancing that we all associate with Paris cabarets like Moulin Rouge emanates from the partying depths of Offenbach’s Hades. The Pocket Opera cast members do not disappoint in their abilities to bend up their knees and tip their toes high in the air and to line up a can-can sure to tickle the ribs of us. The finale is just one more reason to grab a ticket to the one remaining performance of a too-short run of the company’s Orpheus in the Underworld.
Rating: 4.5 E
Orpheus in the Underworld continues in final performance 2 p.m., June 25, 2023, at the Legion of Honor Museum, Lincoln Park, San Francisco. Tickets are available at http://pocketopera.org .
Photos Credit: Pocket Opera
