Gluck
Orfeo ed Euridice
Jakub Józef Orliński (countertenor), Fatma Said (soprano) et al; Il Giardino d’amore/Stefan Plewniak
Erato 5419789753 84 mins
Forget the preamble. After the briefest of overtures, Gluck plunges us into the heart of the tale of Orpheus: Euridice is dead and Orfeo is hell-bent on rescuing her. The music is at the service of the text, brilliantly articulated here by an accomplished ensemble delivering the terse, direct and highly expressive narrative to perfection.
Orliński is the mastermind behind the recording, made in his native Poland with a Polish orchestra and chorus. Credited as artistic director, he also sings the role of Orfeo with searing intensity, every phrase taking us on a rollercoaster ride from hope to despair and back.
Orliński’s touching, plangent Orfeo dominates the opening two Acts of the opera, exchanging his innermost thoughts and fears with the ever-present chorus, and entering into his fateful pact with Fatma Said’s fruity Amore. Stefan Plewniak’s orchestra supplies vivid backdrops of chirping birds, babbling brooks, fallen Heroes and devilish demons as Orfeo descends to the Netherworld.
French-Danish soprano Elsa Dreisig is a wonderfully feisty Euridice when she finally makes her entrance in Act 3. The increasingly frustrated exchanges between husband and wife ratchet up the tension, so that when Euridice dies again, Orfeo’s ‘Che farò senza Euridice?’ emerges as an unexpectedly poignant moment of desolation and loss.
It all ends happily in this 1762 first version of Gluck’s opera, and the composer’s dramatic powers leap off the score in this fresh, lively and surely definitive recording of a time-honoured story. Ashutosh Khandekar
