Orpheus und Eurydike by Christoph Willibald Gluck, Opera-Dance by Pina Bausch (Opéra national de Paris 2008) [Blu-ray]

Metropolitan Opera manager Rudolf Bing once said Callas performed Tosca spoiled the opera for him, because he could no longer fully enjoyed any other artists in the role afterwards. Pina Bausch’s Orfeo ed Eurydice did same to me,

Orpheus und Eurydike is a dance-opera. Pina Bausch took Gluck's ancient Orpheus and Eurydike opera and tells the story very strongly. I knew the story, having seen the entire opera with a contra-tenor playing Orpheus. Once I figured out the sub titles, allowing me to follow the story line better, I was able to understand better the action. Many of the words of the libretto are stripped away leaving the stark tale of twice lost love. The interplay of the dancer and singer pairs in the last scene is remarkably outstanding.The voices are excellent, sung on stage by two outstanding sopranos. The singers are in beautiful, long, black, floor length gowns, and mostly allow the dancers to be the visual center of attention.The dancers are all superb bringing out the anguish, the grief, the sadness, the loss of the tale. The dancing is strong and graceful and well demonstrates the emotions of the characters. The costumes are very effective. The ladies all wear over the shoulder, floor length white gowns, except Eurydike who wears a similar, very red gown. The men are very effective mostly in dance shorts, occasional jackets or aprons. Orpheus is very effective in his dance shorts, his exposed postures, body language and facial expressions portraying the emotional part very well.The settings are simple, but support the action.The overall passion of the love of Orpheus for his Eurydike is obvious from the start, soon after her death. The underworld is portrayed as Gluck and the ancient Greek tradition saw it, not the modern Christian, Dante, version. The long, emotional walk up from Hades is well set with the singer and dancer pairs interacting very well.The dance - opera combination is very effective in this case, making a strong production. I have seen one other combination of dance and opera (beyond the French tradition of throwing in a ballet scene) and that was the Denver Opera production where a set of 2 - 12 dancers danced the moods and emotions of the characters around the characters. My memory fails me. That was either Hansel und Gretel or Orpheus und Euryudike. It was also very effective. So, in good hands, and the right story, the combination of dance and opera can blend to make a more effective production than either alone.

Generally excellent. Performed with great dignity. I found the overstuffed chairs ludicrous but they're scarcely visible. The dancers in the metal shop aprons were acceptable. But for me the jocks wandering around in white shorts distroyed the tone of the piece. Eurydike was dressed in a very red red.

The Paris Opera Ballet is considered by many to presently be the world's finest company. They recently performed in New York after a long absence, but friends who know I hate Pina Bausch wondered why I was going to see this ballet. My answer was that this glorious Gluck Opera is usually dreadfully static on the stage, and I was curious how it would look when danced. The evening was absolutely extraordinary. Bausch seemed to have been reined in from his weird excesses by Gluck's lucid classical music. The choreography provided passion to the simple libretto. There are certainly finer vocal renditions of the opera, but as an overall experience they can't come close to glory of this deeply moving dance/opera. Filming dance is always difficult,and Bausch's work loses a bit on film, but the dancers are exquisite. This is truly a stunning achievement!!!

If you like dance and opera, I highly recommend the title above which was recently released by Ballet de l'Opera national de Paris. Both films are based on an ancient Greek myth about Orpheus and Eurydice in the underground. There may be other films that deal with this myth that i am not aware of. Black Orpheus won the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. Black Orpheus takes place in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival and all principal actors are Brazilians with roots in Africa. Black Orpheus is in Portuguese with English sub-titles and is available here in Blu-ray and DVD. I have a Blu-ray copy of Orpheus und Eurydike and I believe it is available here in DVD.

What a marvelous production. We were not sure about an opera/ballet combination but it works - beautifully sung and staged! A powerfully dramatic telling of a very sad tale.

Stage action in many of these early operas is minimal so combining the singing with action in the form of ballet adds to the visual appeal IF that ballet is appropriate to the libretto and singing. Very fortunately the interpretive dance choreographed by Pina Bausch is just that. She first experimented with it in 1975 and this production is a revival of that. The mezzo soprano Maria Riccarda Wesseling has a gorgious voice ideally suited to the role of Orpheus and her role is shadowed by the dancer Yann Bridard.On first acquaintance this dance-opera interpretation can seem odd and I found it required more than a single viewing to decide if it was personally appealing - and untimately yes it was. The music is beautifully played and sung under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock which combined with very effective costuming and lighting comes across superbly in the Blu Ray format. The audio quality is appropriately first class.Highly recommended.

This was recorded a year before she suddenly passed away and to see her take a bow at the end is a wonderful thing. I saw a performance by her company in the early eighties and having to wait another thirty years to see another performance has not diminished my admiration of her. My concern is of the film work itself. It is a dance opera but the director of the video is focused too much on recording the dancers and not the singers, thus sometimes it is difficult to view everything that is going on the stage. Watching it made me realise that for all her accolades as a contemporary creator of dance drama she was very rooted in conventional dance, not that I am complaining, the work is stunning. It is haunting and very emotionally engaginq.

The Blu-Ray package describes this as "dance-opera" but what exactly is that? If there is an enhanced ballet presence to enhance this Gluck opera (ie dramatic singing) that's a tempting experience. But its definitely not an enhance but more of a poor substitute. The principal operatic roles are paired back mainly to fairly low key off-screen singing with little feeling for the intensity or drama in the role. That is left to the ballet performance. So opera is sacrificed to ballet and its quite a loss in my feeling. Compare for example the role of Orphee created by Dame Janet Baker in the 1982 Glyndebourne production. Searingly beautiful and intense. Ballet could maybe enhance that but its certainly here is no substitute. Or more recently the wonderfully heart rending interpretation of Orpheus by Juan Diego Florez [La Scala Milan 2018 now on blu ray]. Just the ballet without seeing the role interpretation by the singer is a tremendous loss. Essentially the singers/singing here is mostly and simply a non-visual supplement to the orchestra. Overall its beautifully danced but no substitute at all for the moving operatic productions of Orpheus and Eurydice available at the moment. Quite a disappointment for me at least.

Stage action in many of these early operas is minimal so combining the singing with action in the form of ballet adds to the visual appeal IF that ballet is appropriate to the libretto and singing. Very fortunately the interpretive dance choreographed by Pina Bausch is just that. She first experimented with it in 1975 and this production is a revival of that. The mezzo soprano Maria Riccarda Wesseling has a gorgious voice ideally suited to the role of Orpheus and her role is shadowed by the dancer Yann Bridard.On first acquaintance this dance-opera interpretation can seem odd and I found it required more than a single viewing to decide if it was personally appealing - and untimately yes it was. The music is beautifully played and sung under the direction of Thomas Hengelbrock which combined with very effective costuming and lighting comes across superbly in the Blu Ray format. The audio quality is appropriately first class.Highly recommended.

Ho acquistato questo bluray attirato dal nome di Pina Bausch pensando erroneamente di comprare la versione migliore dell'opera, in realtà sono rimasto fortemente deluso per due motivi. il cantato è stranamente in Tedesco e non in lingua italiana come avrebbe dovuto essere, quindi non si tratta della versione originale ideata da Gluck. Lo spettacolo poi è ulteriormente stravolto da un altro particolare di non poco conto, mi aspettavo di vedere affiancati i cantanti dai ballerini , invece così non è, il tutto viene risolto in una grande ed unica coreografia e il cantato che ripeto non è in italiano, viene affidato ad una sola cantante che rimane ai margini e a volte non viene neanche inquadrata, il coro invece non si capisce dove sia, forse nella buca dell'orchestra?.

Les opéras des débuts sont parfois un peu statiques, donc ça peut présenter un intérêt d'ajouter un ballet, à condition que celui-ci s'accorde avec la musique et le livret. Il y a des contre-exemples, mais ici c'est le cas d'une réussite. Le ballet de Pina Bausch, expérimenté la première fois en 1975 à Wuppertal, a été présenté à nouveau au Palais Garnier à Paris en 2005, en langue allemande. L'enregistrement présenté ici date de 2008. On ne manque donc pas de versions linguistiques pour cet opéra. Après celle en italien, puis en français, du temps de Gluck, voici donc la version dans la langue du compositeur. A remarquer aussi que Pina Bausch a renoncé au happy end, convention du temps de Gluck mais susceptible de détruire la tension dramatique de l'oeuvre, et reste fidèle au mythe grec d'origine. Rappelons que dans la version de Gluck, Amour surgit à la fin pour rendre Eurydice à Orphée.Les trois principaux personnages sont chacun représenté par un danseur et une voix, ces dernières étant habillées de noir et très discrètes au niveau scénique : Sunhae Im, soprano (Amour), Julia Kleiter, soprano (Eurydice) et Maria Riccarda Wesseling, mezzo-soprano (Orphée). La musique et les chants sont magnifiques. Peut-être faut-il réécouter plusieurs fois avant de vraiment s'en imprégner. Les talentueux danseurs, solistes et corps de ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, sont dirigés avec précision. Le son et les images sont de grande qualité en Blu-ray.

I bought this Blu-ray production on the strength of knowing the stunning, tuneful and highly accessible opera score by Gluck, but with some trepidation about the superimposition of a 'modern dance' ballet. I needn't have worried as the dancing is stunning - graceful and expressive. It beautifully interprets and underscores the storyline, music and vocal text perfectly.The principal dancers are shadowed on stage by the singers - a technique that may sound odd, but actually works fine, and the dancers, singers and orchestra are all first class.Particularly noteworthy is the wonderful dancing of Yann Bridard (Orpheus) and the sublime singing of this part by mezzo soprano Maria Riccarda Wesseling whose wonderful singing voice was new to me. (A lady to listen out for!) If we can't have a castrato in the role these days (and thank heavens we can't) then I find the mezzo alternative highly preferable to the often reedy (and sometimes strained) quality of a counter tenor. (All right - they're not all bad, but...)Add to these pluses, excellent staging (in muted colours), and a really first class Blu-ray quality in vision and sound (full marks to the sound engineers), and you have a disk to treasure.Any negatives? Well, to be picky, I don't know why we have to listen to the audience coughing behind the (otherwise silent) opening titles (its a live performance)? - concert coughers belong in my room 101. Fortunately they are not intrusive during the actual production. And I think the optional subtitles (best without when you are familiar with the text) might have been better as sur-titles (ie at the top of the screen) where they wouldn't interfere with the main action.But these are very small criticisms, especially put against the overall production, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this (especially in Blu-ray) to anyone who enjoys good music, whether opera or ballet, combined with high quality video and audio.