Dangerous Mezzo Productions

Cast handles lively score, pretty tunes in Offenbach’s classic
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN Arts Reporter
Sat. Feb 7 - 6:51 AM

After decades of movies, TV dramas and sitcoms, it’s always a surprise to discover how many belly-laughs a witty operetta from 150 years ago can trigger.

But the delight, as always, depends on the quality of the production. Dalhousie Opera Workshop not only meets this requirement but takes it over the top in its production of Jacques Offenbach’s satirical Orpheus in The Underworld which opened in the Dunn on Thursday night and continues tonight and Sunday afternoon.

It would be hard to find a livelier score with prettier tunes and more endorphin-tweaking dances than Offenbach’s. And it all climaxes with the happiest, hell-raisingest dance of all, the fiery Galop, which Paris’s naughty Moulin Rouge stole from Offenbach and renamed the can-can.

The Dalhousie production is full of inventive twists and modern staging — cellphones have invaded Mount Olympus, home of Jupiter and the other Greek gods, and the iPod, with savage poetic justice, has found a new home in Hell.

The youthful cast fills the stage with pretty, lively women and brawny, good-looking men. Egged on by a clever, hilarious new translation of the libretto by Jeremy Sams, and shoved over the conventional boundaries of inventiveness by the infectious goofiness of director Nina Scott-Stoddart, the actors have discovered their natural clown, and are, gratefully, entirely unself-conscious about it.

Their physical and vocal wit is full of spontaneity.

Jonathan McArthur as Pluto, disguised at the start as the shepherd Aristeus in order to seduce Orpheus’s wife Euridice, is comically effeminate before metamorphosing into the demonically deft emcee and mastermind of the Underworld. His affected manner appeals to Euridice (Katrina Weston), bored out of her mind by having to listen to another violin tune written by her husband Orpheus.

Except for the first scene, the remaining three in this operetta take place after death, beginning with an ambrosia slumber on Mount Olympus, and ending up with a wild party in Hell.

Josh Whelan plays a modern Jupiter, indulgent but in control, or so he thinks. He packs an awkwardly sized thunderbolt just in case. Whelan wittily conveys the contradiction within his character. Jupiter tries to be stern and lectures his children on morality, but they will have none of it. They know too much of his bizarre sex life. They mutiny, mounting a protest with pickets, when he gets too bossy.

Whelan punctures his own dignity by mincing off and on-stage at top speed, entirely on the tips of his toes.

The singing is very good, though prepare yourself for trebly voices — these are young singers. But their pitch and their intonation as well as their ability to sustain phrases is a delight.

Transcendent comic bits are too many to mention. Katrina Westin does a trim Public Opinion in a neat business suit, and Paul Medeiros, who plays the violin for Orpheus, does a terrific send-up of the concert virtuoso, and he has the chops to do it.

But the comic laureate award of the show goes to Matthew Beasant-McKeown whose performance as the ferryman John Styx is prime. His job, in Greek mythology, is to ferry the newly dead over Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. This John Styx is drunk on forgetfulness, frequently resorting to a flask of it he conceals on his person. It plays the devil with his short-term memory but one thing blazes through his consciousness: he is totally turned on by Euridice. She fends him off calling for Pluto to rescue her.

Gary Ewer conducts the show, which guarantees an alert ensemble able to play comedy without singing out of tune or messing up the ensemble. The Dalhousie Vocal Music studio, Greg Servant and Marcia Swanston, prepared the singers excellently, and pianist Dean Bradshaw supplied a light, sparkling touch to Offenbach’s scintillating score.

The show is double-cast, playing twice each on alternate performances over the four shows.

(spedersen@herald.ca)

Cast handles lively score, pretty tunes in Offenbach’s classic
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN Arts Reporter
Sat. Feb 7 - 6:51 AM

After decades of movies, TV dramas and sitcoms, it’s always a surprise to discover how many belly-laughs a witty operetta from 150 years ago can trigger.

But the delight, as always, depends on the quality of the production. Dalhousie Opera Workshop not only meets this requirement but takes it over the top in its production of Jacques Offenbach’s satirical Orpheus in The Underworld which opened in the Dunn on Thursday night and continues tonight and Sunday afternoon.

It would be hard to find a livelier score with prettier tunes and more endorphin-tweaking dances than Offenbach’s. And it all climaxes with the happiest, hell-raisingest dance of all, the fiery Galop, which Paris’s naughty Moulin Rouge stole from Offenbach and renamed the can-can.

The Dalhousie production is full of inventive twists and modern staging — cellphones have invaded Mount Olympus, home of Jupiter and the other Greek gods, and the iPod, with savage poetic justice, has found a new home in Hell.

The youthful cast fills the stage with pretty, lively women and brawny, good-looking men. Egged on by a clever, hilarious new translation of the libretto by Jeremy Sams, and shoved over the conventional boundaries of inventiveness by the infectious goofiness of director Nina Scott-Stoddart, the actors have discovered their natural clown, and are, gratefully, entirely unself-conscious about it.

Their physical and vocal wit is full of spontaneity.

Jonathan McArthur as Pluto, disguised at the start as the shepherd Aristeus in order to seduce Orpheus’s wife Euridice, is comically effeminate before metamorphosing into the demonically deft emcee and mastermind of the Underworld. His affected manner appeals to Euridice (Katrina Weston), bored out of her mind by having to listen to another violin tune written by her husband Orpheus.

Except for the first scene, the remaining three in this operetta take place after death, beginning with an ambrosia slumber on Mount Olympus, and ending up with a wild party in Hell.

Josh Whelan plays a modern Jupiter, indulgent but in control, or so he thinks. He packs an awkwardly sized thunderbolt just in case. Whelan wittily conveys the contradiction within his character. Jupiter tries to be stern and lectures his children on morality, but they will have none of it. They know too much of his bizarre sex life. They mutiny, mounting a protest with pickets, when he gets too bossy.

Whelan punctures his own dignity by mincing off and on-stage at top speed, entirely on the tips of his toes.

The singing is very good, though prepare yourself for trebly voices — these are young singers. But their pitch and their intonation as well as their ability to sustain phrases is a delight.

Transcendent comic bits are too many to mention. Katrina Westin does a trim Public Opinion in a neat business suit, and Paul Medeiros, who plays the violin for Orpheus, does a terrific send-up of the concert virtuoso, and he has the chops to do it.

But the comic laureate award of the show goes to Matthew Beasant-McKeown whose performance as the ferryman John Styx is prime. His job, in Greek mythology, is to ferry the newly dead over Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. This John Styx is drunk on forgetfulness, frequently resorting to a flask of it he conceals on his person. It plays the devil with his short-term memory but one thing blazes through his consciousness: he is totally turned on by Euridice. She fends him off calling for Pluto to rescue her.

Gary Ewer conducts the show, which guarantees an alert ensemble able to play comedy without singing out of tune or messing up the ensemble. The Dalhousie Vocal Music studio, Greg Servant and Marcia Swanston, prepared the singers excellently, and pianist Dean Bradshaw supplied a light, sparkling touch to Offenbach’s scintillating score.

The show is double-cast, playing twice each on alternate performances over the four shows.

(spedersen@herald.ca)

Off-the-wall opera updated
Dalhousie students take on Offenbach’s comedy, Orpheus in the Underworld
By Our Staff
Wed. Feb 4 - 9:45 AM

[Paul Medeiros, left Becca Topp and Jeremy Dutcher rehearse a scene from Dalhousie Opera Workshop’s production of Orpheus. The opera will run from Thursday to Sunday in the Sir James Dunn Theatre. (Staff)

]

Paul Medeiros, left Becca Topp and Jeremy Dutcher rehearse a scene from Dalhousie Opera Workshop’s production of Orpheus. The opera will run from Thursday to Sunday in the Sir James Dunn Theatre. (Staff)

Narcissus making love to his own head shot. Mercury on a bicycle. Jupiter being called to account for his scattershot sexual encounters. Classical mythology was never like this.

But French composer Jacques Offenbach sends the gods up with enthusiasm in his 1858 comic opera Orpheus in the Underworld. Audiences were prudish about his satire at first, expressing more shock than awe. But later, won over by pretty tunes and comic twists of plot, they ended up being enchanted and delighted.

Offenbach’s comedy has been a staple of opera company repertoires for 150 years.

In the Sir James Dunn Theatre on Thursday night, the Dalhousie Music Department Opera Workshop stages the first of four performances of Orpheus in the Underworld with two student casts, pianist Dean Bradshaw and conductor Gary Ewer. The director Nina Scott-Stoddart, in conversation with soprano Becca Topp in Marcia Swanston’s voice studio, puts it this way: “I see it as examining sexual politics. Every single scene, and there’s four of them, centres around relationships between men and women.

“In Act 1 there’s the eternal triangle: There’s Orpheus, there’s Euridice and there’s Aristaeus (who is really Pluto in disguise). All the tension there is how these three are going to work out their relationship. It’s operetta so there’s a light touch, of course, Offenbach trying to amuse and also trying to shock.

“It was a very shocking piece when it debuted in the middle of the 19th century. People were aghast that somebody would treat these sacred, high, morally lofty tales of gods and goddesses like a cheap burlesque. And Marcia found a wonderful English translation of the libretto by Jeremy Sams.”

Swanston commented: “It’s a great show with wonderful tunes. The music is really enjoyable and I have to say it really is a good translation. It’s so clever. There are so many references to contemporary attitudes, and it’s risque.”

In the classic tale, Orpheus is a musician. His wife Euridice is beautiful. While walking in her garden one day, she is fatally bitten by a snake and is taken to the Underworld. Orpheus travels to Mount Olympus, where he plays his blues so heartbreakingly that the gods decide to let Euridice come back to earth. She will follow him out of Hell, but he must not look back till he reaches Earth. Racked by doubts, he looks back expecting she will not be there. She is and has to return forever. Orpheus returns empty-handed.

Offenbach’s spin on the tale is pure tongue-in-cheek. Orpheus is a violinist, but a bad one. Euridice, driven out of her mind by his scratching, is a flirt having an affair with Aristaeus, who is Pluto, the god of the Underworld, in disguise.

Orpheus travels to Mount Olympus to present his case. He brings with him a new character: Public Opinion. Jupiter, mindful of his own children, who are watching rebelliously for any sign of hypocrisy since their mothers are mostly his own daughters, tells Pluto to give Euridice back.

Needless to say, that’s not the end of the story. The climax comes at a party in Hell where everybody, urged on by Bacchus, the god of wine, behaves badly. Jupiter resorts to a thunderbolt to sort things out.

The opera is being staged in modern dress. Topp (Feb. 5 and 7 performances), who shares the role of Euridice with Mary-Claire Sanderson (Feb. 6 and 8), says, “We’ve put in things like cellphones and iPods. Euridice is rather flighty. She doesn’t stay with any one person for any length of time. This is facilitated by the fact that she’s always plugged in, always connected, always looking for that next text message or what she wants to listen to.”

As a young woman, Topp finds a feminist perspective in the opera. “At every turn, Euridice is finding a way to pull the situation in her favour. She’s in a position of power.”

The opera plays nightly at 7:30 till Saturday, ending with a 2 p.m. matinee Sunday. Tickets are $15 and $10 and are available at the Dalhousie Arts Centre box office. Call 494-3820 or 1-800-874-1669 or purchase online (artscentre.dal.ca).

We’re well underway with this year’s Dal Opera Workshop — this year’s work is Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, with an amazing English translation by Jeremy Sams. I am thrilled I get to direct at Dal again this year (my third) and Orpheus is such a treat

See the Dal Music website for more production details:

http://music.dal.ca/Ensembles/Opera_Workshop.php