(; ; ) is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on the myth of Orpheus and set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762, in the presence of Empress Maria Theresa. Orfeo ed Euridice is the first of Gluck's "reform" operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of opera seria with a "noble simplicity" in both the music and the drama.

The opera is the most popular of Gluck's works, and several alterations were made in vocal casting and orchestration to suit French tastes.

Background

thumb|upright|Algarotti by [[Jean-Étienne Liotard in the Rijksmuseum]]

Francesco Algarotti's Essay on the Opera (1755) was a major influence in the development of Gluck's reformist ideology. Algarotti proposed a heavily simplified model of opera seria, with the drama pre-eminent, instead of the music or ballet or staging. The drama itself should "delight the eyes and ears, to rouse up and to affect the hearts of an audience, without the risk of sinning against reason or common sense". Algarotti's ideas influenced both Gluck and his librettist, Calzabigi. Calzabigi was himself a prominent advocate of reform,

Other influences included the composer Niccolò Jommelli and his maître de ballet at Stuttgart, Jean-Georges Noverre.

The second scene opens in Elysium. The brief ballet of 1762 became the four-movement "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" (with a prominent part for solo flute) in 1774. This is followed (1774 only) by a solo which celebrates happiness in eternal bliss ("Cet asile"), sung by either an unnamed Spirit or Euridice, and repeated by the chorus. Orfeo arrives and marvels at the purity of the air in an arioso ("Che puro ciel"/"Quel nouveau ciel"). But he finds no solace in the beauty of the surroundings, for Euridice is not yet with him. He implores the spirits to bring her to him, which they do (Chorus: "Torna, o bella"/"Près du tendre objet").

Act 3

On the way out of Hades, Euridice is delighted to be returning to earth, but Orfeo, remembering the condition related by Amore in act 1, lets go of her hand and refusing to look at her, does not explain anything to her. She does not understand his action and reproaches him, but he must suffer in silence (Duet: "Vieni, appaga il tuo consorte"/"Viens, suis un époux"). Euridice takes this to be a sign that he no longer loves her, and refuses to continue, concluding that death would be preferable. She sings of her grief at Orfeo's supposed infidelity in the aria "Che fiero momento"/"Fortune ennemie" (in 1774, there is a brief duet before the reprise). Unable to take any more, Orfeo turns and looks at Euridice; again, she dies. Orfeo sings of his grief in the famous aria "Che farò senza Euridice?"/"J’ai perdu mon Eurydice" ("What shall I do without Euridice?"/"I have lost my Euridice") Orfeo decides he will kill himself to join Euridice in Hades, but Amore returns to stop him (1774 only: Trio: "Tendre Amour"). In reward for Orfeo's continued love, Amore returns Euridice to life, and she and Orfeo are reunited. After a four-movement ballet, all sing in praise of Amore ("Trionfi Amore"). In the 1774 version, the chorus ("L’Amour triomphe") precedes the ballet, to which Gluck had added three extra movements.

Performance history

left|thumb|Ferrier in Orfeo & Eurydice (1949)

The opera was first performed in Vienna at the Burgtheater on 5 October 1762, for the name day celebrations of the Emperor Francis I. The production was supervised by the reformist theatre administrator, Count Giacomo Durazzo. Choreography was by Gasparo Angiolini, and set designs were by Giovanni Maria Quaglio the Elder, both leading members of their fields. The first Orfeo was the famous castrato Gaetano Guadagni. Orfeo was revived in Vienna during the following year, but then not performed until 1769. For the performances that took place in London in 1770, Guadagni sang the role of Orpheus, but little of the music bore any relation to Gluck's original, with J. C. Bach – "the English Bach" – providing most of the new music. The main characters are presented in a modern setting with Orfeo as a choreographer, Euridice as his principal dancer, and Amour as his assistant. The same production was staged by the Los Angeles Opera in 2018 and by the Hamburg State Opera and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden in 2019.

Revised versions

thumb|upright|Title page of the 1774 French version, as published by Lemarchand

1769 Parma version

In 1769, for Le feste d'Apollo at Parma (which was conducted by the composer), Gluck transposed the role of Orfeo up for the soprano castrato Giuseppe Millico, maintaining Calzabigi's original libretto, albeit reduced to a single act and renamed Atto d'Orfeo.

After not having been performed for a very long time, this version was finally given its first modern revival on 13 November 2014 at the ' in Herne, Germany, with a countertenor in the title role. It was staged again, with Cecilia Bartoli in the male lead, at the 2023 Salzburg Whitsun Festival and later at Cremona's Teatro Ponchielli in June 2025.

Gluck's 1774 Paris Opera version

Gluck revised the score again for a production by the Paris Opera premiering on 2 August 1774 at the second Salle du Palais-Royal. Renamed Orphée et Eurydice, When Adolphe Nourrit sang the role at the Opéra in 1824 his music was altered. Giacomo Meyerbeer suggested to the French mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot that she should perform the role of Orfeo. The composer Hector Berlioz was a close friend of Viardot and the leading expert in France on the music of Gluck. He knew the score of "the largely forgotten Italian original as thoroughly as he knew the French", thus, he did not simply "return to the original contralto version, but rearranged and retransposed the Paris version into keys more suitable for a mezzo". In his adaptation, Berlioz used the key scheme of the 1762 Vienna score while incorporating much of the additional music of the 1774 Paris score. He returned to the Italian version only when he considered it to be superior either in terms of music or in terms of the drama. He also restored some of the more subtle orchestration from the Italian version and resisted proposals by Viardot and the theatre's director Léon Carvalho to modernize the orchestration. In the end Camille Saint-Saëns, who was acting as Berlioz's assistant on the project, did some of the minor rewriting which Berlioz had declined to do.

thumb|Orfeo (mezzosoprano), costume design for a four-act Orfeo (1889)

Subsequent versions

By 1860 most theaters in Paris had lowered concert pitch to diapason normal. This was not as low as in Gluck's time: "a Commission had lately recommended that the pitch in France should be lowered from an A of 896 to 870 vibrations." Still this was apparently enough that later in the 19th century the role of Orpheus came to be sung almost as frequently by a tenor as by a contralto. Other elements do not follow Gluck's subsequent reforms; for instance, the brisk, cheerful overture does not reflect the action to come. The first Orfeo, Gaetano Guadagni, was reputedly a fine actor who had certainly taken lessons while in London from the Shakespearian actor David Garrick. Guadagni was apparently also able to project a moving and emotive tone without raising his voice.

For the 1774 French version, Orphée et Eurydice, tragédie opéra in three acts, the libretto was published by Delormel (Paris, 1774) and the full score by Lemarchand (Paris, 1774). A critical edition, edited by musicologist Ludwig Finscher, was published in 1967 as part of Bärenreiter's Sämtliche Werke. Substantial fragments of autograph scores are in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra in Paris.

Recordings

There have been numerous recordings of the different versions, especially of the Berlioz adaptation featuring a female Orfeo. The British contralto Kathleen Ferrier and American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne were especially notable interpreters.

In 2022, Brooklyn Telemann Chamber Society released a film version with cinematography by Matthew Kyle Levine, using an amalgamation of the 1774 Naples score and others with text from Dante Alighieri's Inferno. In this feature-length film, soprano Alexandra Pawlus plays the title role transcribed for her voice, with Helena Waterous as Euridice and Allegra Durante as Amore. Additional characters Hades and Persephone (played by director Liz Kiger) and Cerberus add to the dramatic tension of the film.

References

Notes

Sources

Further reading

  • Durazzo, Angela Valenti. "La premiata ditta Durazzo & Gluck" in I Durazzo: Da schiavi a dogi della Repubblica di Genova, Principality of Monaco (2004).
  • Rice, John A., "Women in Love: Gluck's Orpheus as a Source of Romantic Consolation in Vienna, Paris, and Stockholm"
  • Orfeo ed Euridice, azione teatrale per musica, Gluck's 1762 Italian version in Parisian 18th-century manuscript copies at the BNF's Gallica website:
  • full score (BnF ms D-9215, 1764 or later), originally from the Intendance des Menus-Plaisirs
  • full score (BnF ms VM4-46, 1769 or later), originally from the Bibliothèque Royale
  • full score (BnF ms RES-2397, 1769 or later), after the Duchesne edition (engraved by Cambon, Paris, 1764), originally from the library of the Paris Conservatory
  • Orphée et Euridice, tragédie, opera en trois actes (Paris: Lemarchand), Gluck's 1774 Paris Opera version, full score at Gallica
  • Orphée, opéra en quatre actes, Berlioz's 1859 Théâtre Lyrique version:
  • libretto (Paris: Calmann-Lévy) at the Internet Archive
  • vocal score with piano reduction by Thédore Ritter (Paris: Heugel) at the Internet Archive
  • Libretto in Italian
  • Libretto of the 1774 Paris version
  • Piano Vocal Score – English and Italian
  • Libretto in Italian, French, English, German; synopsis from Opera-Guide.ch
  • Opera guide on Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, an opera portrait with synopsis, commentary, music analysis, anecdotes