Archive: Arts & Entertainment

L'Orfeo, at Ithaca College, perfectly melds movement and movement, the way that opera originally set out to do. And Monteverdi's L'Orfeo is the earliest opera, originally performed in 1607.

Conductor Brian DeMaris and director David Lefkowich co-teach the Opera Workshop at Ithaca College. Their students do them proud in this production. They can act, dance, roll around on the floor as tormented Hadean spirits, and still sing that twirling Baroque music. It's great to see opera students so physically and vocally comfortable.

The production is in the small Clarke Theatre, with the orchestra upstage under a gold-rimmed pergola, and the shepherds dancing on the very toes of the audience. For the wedding of Orfeo and Euridice, Lefkowich has created a romping, youthful world, where all the shepherds and nymphs create relationships and respond to their god-like friends with joy and sorrow.

Orfeo, sung strongly if stolidly by Daniel Bates (Alexander Canovas appears on alternate nights), reclines on a white brocade divan, eating grapes, while his shy bride--sweet-voiced Laura Gladd-is robed by her attendants. She is stung by a viper, dies, and Orfeo resolves to bring back from Hades.

This is the perfect show for opera students. It offers 15 small singing roles-shepherds, nymphs, spirits of hell, Hope, Charon, Proserpine, Pluto-too many to name here. Now and then a youthful voice roughened at the top or bottom of its range, but all acquitted themselves well with the rolling Italian and the ornamented score. The orchestra, augmented by professional guest artists Mary Holzhauer and Daniel Boring on period instruments, did well with the brass, but on opening night the strings, which include two miniature violins, were a little flat. Conductor DeMaris kept the pacing strong, helped by cuts that brought this three-plus-hour opera in at under two hours.

Daniel Bates '11 plays Orfeo and Nathan McNeill Murphy '12 plays Caronte in 'L'Orfeo'.

In the second act, Orfeo descends into Hades, with La Musica physically representing the music Orfeo uses to vanquish Charon and Cerebus, (the latter mutely and fiercely played by Matt Johnson, Christopher Ramirez, and Skyler Schlenker). Lefkowich has created a terrific ballet-battle, with Orfeo flinging Musica at his foes. In the only other double-cast role, Katherine Henley was a wonderful Musica, acting joy, pain, and fear with a lovely presence. (Ana Strachan plays her on alternate nights.)

Madison Ryckman mined The Adams Family and Twilight to create great costumes for Pluto and Proserpina. She is less adept with the gold-rimmed clothes of Orfeo and Apollo; they look too plastic. Scenic designer Nik Taylor has Pluto on a seven-foot, rolling throne, and Apollo on a golden palanquin, both terrific effects. So is the burnt-out couch that Orfeo returns to after losing Euridice a second time. The truncated Corinthian columns of Hellgate were just plain weird, but maybe that was the point.

Unless you prefer your opera perfectly sung by brilliant adults and boringly acted and directed (guess what I prefer?), this is a thoroughly enjoyable production.

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