Orfeo ed Euridice at Teatro Dell’Opera Di Roma directed by Robert Carsen. A young man’s wretched cries over the death of his one true love echo as a funeral choir slowly belts out a mournful tune. Christoph Willibald Gluck grabs the audience’s attention from the very start of his monumental opera Orfeo ed Euridice and does not let go until the final chord rings out. The inventive and dramatically avantgarde work finds new life on the stage of Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
Gluck was a composer of notable dramatic flair and vivid imagination who always felt constrained by the rigid rules of the Italian opera seria of the 18th century. In his work on Orfeo ed Euridice, he longed to break away from the patterns that dominated the genre and snuffed out any attempt at innovation.