Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
There IS a better version of Orphée!, 4 Feb 2009
I agree with most of Mr. Burgess' comments - although I have strong reservations about the Gedda performance - and have previously written reviews about the available recorded Orfeo/Orphées (male and female) elsewhere on Amazon. However, for those opera-lovers who would like to both hear and SEE a unique performance of the 1774 (Paris) version I highly recommend The Australian Opera's 1993 production - available on the OpusArte/Faveo label (or Kultur, in North America) - with Orphée sung to perfection by Australian haute-contre David Hobson. The following is part of a review of that DVD performance I submitted to Amazon several years ago:
"International opera-lovers have had to wait a long time for the release of this remarkable 1993 Opera Australia production of the rarely staged 1774 (Paris) Orphée et Eurydice, in which the central role is sung by an haute-contre tenor, as originally written by Gluck.
David Hobson, who just months earlier had sung Rodolfo in the legendary Baz Luhrmann production of La Bohème, enthralled critics and audiences alike with his electrifying portrayal of the grief-stricken and inconsolable Orphée. Singing the role at the supposedly 'unsingable' modern A440 pitch without transpositions, the young Australian, already possessing a strikingly beautiful voice (which has now matured into an impressive instrument of richness and power, so that he is recognised as the country's finest tenor) gave a performance which is remembered with awe. One critic summed it up well when he said (the following season) that whatever the length of Hobson's career, he would be unlikely to tackle a more difficult role than Orphée which . . . is a brute of an assignment for a male with a high tenor voice but below countertenor. He concluded that not only was Hobson's performance a triumph, but that the production itself was a jewel in the (Opera Australia) crown and irresistable, accessable entertainment.
Highlights include Hobson's singing of the challenging Act I ariette 'L'espoir renaît dans mon âme', standing spotlit on a passeraille extending into the otherwise dark theatre, literally within reach of the audience. That passeraille figured prominently in the production so Hobson came to know it rather well, at one point even having to negotiate it blindfold! Another visually and vocally dramatic moment occurs at the beginning of Act II, with Hobson suspended high above the stage and The Furies, singing 'Laissez-vous toucher par mes pleurs' - complete with High D - as Orphée pleads to be allowed to search for his beloved Eurydice in the Underworld. The famous 'J'ai perdu mon Eurydice' was not only a moving and beautifully sung lament but physically demanding as well, with Hobson sometimes having to sing laying on his stomach or - at the very climax of the aria - trying to drag an inert soprano upright by one arm! (His obvious distress during the ensuing ovation was genuine.)"
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Modified rapture, 13 Oct 2006
The role of Orpheus in Gluck's seminal best-known opera is most familiar today as sung by a star female contralto or mezzo, such as Kathleen Ferrier or Janet Baker in this country. This, however, was an innovation of Berlioz, a great admirer of the composer, Gluck himself having made three different versions for male singers - the contralto castrato Gaudagni in 1762, the soprano Millico in 1769 and the tenor Joseph Legros at Paris in 1774. The latter version, extremely taxing for the singer on account of the high tessitura of the part, is rarely encountered today and some would claim that the tenor voice inappropriately "humanises" and makes more "operatic" a monumental sublime role for which the ideal vocal type remains the contralto. A practical 18th century musician like Gluck would clearly not have thought in such terms and one can at least say that the Paris version is authentic to Gluck in a way that Berlioz-based versions cannot be. If a tenor can sing it, why not do it this way once in a while?
In view of its rarety it is surprising that the new recording comes close on the heels of the version conducted by Marc Minkowski with the American tenor Richard Croft on DG. Opera Lafayette of Washington DC has an orchestra using original instruments and correspondingly light-voiced singers. They are accomplished, but make little impression in music that surely needs much more dramatic impetus - this after all was Gluck's whole intention in his famous reform of opera. The recording does not help, being curiously recessed and disembodied. Jean-Paul Fouchecourt, like Richard Croft before him, acquits himself well in the notorious bravura aria demanded at the end of Act 1 by the singer Legros. The booklet claims that, ironically, it was in fact left out in the first performances because Legros could not manage it! It also suggests that the edition presented here, omitting as well the trio in Act 3 and the ballet divertissement at the end, represents what was actually heard in 1774.
Those items are included by Minkowski, who tends to drive much of the music hard and whose singers are no more appealing than Opera Lafayette's. Both Croft and Fouchecourt sing the role of Orpheus at a lower pitch than written, as was probably the case in the 18th century. Maybe other tenors will now take up this version, even if it is unlikely to displace the familiar one with a female Orpheus. Those who wish to hear it would do better to seek out the available recording with Leopold Simoneau, finely conducted by Hans Rosbaud, from 1956 or, even better, from the previous year's Aix-en-Provence Festival Nicolai Gedda, who sings the whole part at the written pitch, right up to the high D, in full voice and magnificently.
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