Tom's Life Bits

June 27, 2008 Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill

We attended this Longleaf Opera Festival performance in Memorial Hall on the UNC campus in the evening. Drove through a thunderstorm to get there. The performace was wonderful.

It starts in silence as the Doug Verone dancers quietly go through several dance moves in flowing robes over white costumes. One dancer is in an orange dress and surprisingly she is the Soprano. What a beautiful voice - it could have been Kathleen Battle as Libbie suggested but I was thinking of Dawn Upshaw. The male protaganist is a bare footed clarinetist in jeans who was equally talented. The piano was used as part of the set as the platform it was on got whirled and spun by the Doug Verone dance ensemble.

The minimalist sets and the constant storytelling throughout by the dancers made this opera work well. Having a soprano and a clarinetist that are willing to be tossed around, including one time getting tossed under the piano adds to the great showmanship we saw. This was a great performance put on locally which is very surprising.

We had a small treat before the opera began. The composer talked to the audience about how he accomplished the writing. It's small theater when the composer sits in your row in the auditorium, Row E.

CHAPEL HILL - When opera soprano Elizabeth Futral appears Friday in Long Leaf Opera's production of Ricky Ian Gordon's “Orpheus and Euridice,” she will be returning to her home state with an even higher profile than when she last visited.

By the time of that 2000 Greensboro recital, Futral, a Smithfield native, had made her Metropolitan Opera debut and had been seen on PBS in Andre Previn's “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Last year, several hundred thousand people saw her live in movie theaters across the country (including in Raleigh) in the Met's hi-def transmission of Tan Dun's “The First Emperor,” starring Placido Domingo.

Futral's glowing reviews for that performance echoed those she received for the 2005 “Orpheus” at Lincoln Center, garnering additional accolades for her physical performance on the shoulders of dancers and writhing on the floor.

The production's range of vocal, instrumental and choreographic elements won an Obie (off-Broadway's equivalent to a Tony).

It was a piece that noted clarinetist Todd Palmer had commissioned. At the time, Gordon's partner was dying, so the composer turned the commission into a farewell tribute.

Gordon found a universal subject in the myth of Orpheus, who plays such sad songs at the death of his wife, Euridice, that the gods weep, allowing her to return to life if Orpheus does not look at her on the way back from the underworld. Orpheus' love is too great: He fails to keep the promise, and he loses her again.

Futral missed out on the work's first performance.

“Ricky and I met in my early days in New York around 1992, the beginning of a wonderful musical and personal relationship,” she recalled in a recent phone interview from her home near Roanoke, Va. “He said that he had my voice in mind when he composed 'Orpheus,' but unfortunately, I was not available for that first version.”

Luckily, Futral was available when the Lincoln Center American Songbook series asked Gordon to revive the work.

He expanded “Orpheus” into a 70-minute piece with costumes and sets, casting Palmer as Orpheus and Futral as Euridice and narrator. He also added choreography for eight dancers by modern dance luminary Doug Varone (whose company appears here at the American Dance Festival next month).

Futral said she was thrilled to perform a work she so admires.

“The simplicity and spareness really distill the story down to a pure form, told in a simple, uncomplicated way,” she said. “It has so much immediacy and meaning and is very well-crafted.”

She says audiences respond to the work's poetry and emotion, as well as its unusual structure.

“It's such an unusual thing for a singer, and even more so for an instrumentalist, to move and dance through a whole piece,” she said. “I think it is all the more powerful because of that.”

The Long Leaf production is a coup for the company, as it features not only Futral but also Palmer and the Varone dancers, repeating the original Lincoln Center version with some modification for UNC's Memorial Hall. Only the pianist is new: recording artist Simon Mulligan, a frequent accompanist for violinist Joshua Bell.

Long Leaf's executive director Jim Schaeffer credits America's premier opera composer, Jake Heggie, with making this “Orpheus” possible. Heggie so enjoyed his time here last year with the production of his “At the Statue of Venus,” he recommended Long Leaf to Gordon.

These performances come just as Gordon is riding a wave of success from his recent full-length opera, “The Grapes of Wrath,” and a commission from the Met.

Elizabeth Futral says of 'Orpheus and Euridice':
'The simplicity and spareness really distill the
story down to a pure form. … It has so much immediacy and meaning.'
ELIZABETH FUTRAL

N&), By Roy C. Dicks, Correspondent
CHAPEL HILL - Long Leaf Opera ends its summer festival with a dazzling production of Ricky Ian Gordon's “Orpheus and Euridice.” The work's boundary-bursting combination of concert, opera and dance adds stature to the company's image.

American composer Gordon chose the Greek myth of lost love for his piece with clarinet, soprano and piano. Noted clarinetist Todd Palmer premiered the 50-minute work in 2001.

Gordon expanded the piece to 70 minutes for a 2005 Lincoln Center staging by modern dance choreographer Doug Varone, with Palmer, opera star Elizabeth Futral, and Varone's dance company. When these participants were asked to perform it for Long Leaf, they decided to revisit their work, resulting in changes substantive enough to label this version a premiere in its own right.

In Gordon's accessible, melodic piece, the clarinet is Orpheus and the soprano is both Euridice and narrator. Gordon's modern retelling in rhymed text follows the pair's meeting and marriage, Euridice's sudden death (here by mysterious virus), Orpheus' bargain to bring her back from death, and his ultimate betrayal of that bargain. Gordon's music needs more variety in the felicitous first half but it supplies appropriate anger, fear, sadness and regret in the more dramatic second half.

While “Orpheus” has merit as a chamber piece, it moves to a completely different plane as a staged work. Although Varone's conception has operatic elements, the work's current form is best classified as dance (it would not be out of place at the American Dance Festival, where Varone's company appears next month). Even though Palmer, Futral and pianist Simon Mulligan (the only new participant) perform their musical assignments with admirable professionalism, movement defines the overall structure.

Varone's eight dancers form an expressive chorus, their amazingly fluid gestures and limber couplings reflecting every musical ornament and mood change. Their manipulation of eight chairs, the only set pieces, creates many unforgettable images.

More astonishingly, the dancers constantly lift, carry and hold the soloists, Futral singing unwavering tones as she flies through the air, Palmer not missing a note as he is held upside down. Both also participate in much of the choreography. In addition, Mulligan's piano is on a rolling platform, which the dancers periodically spin in circles or sail across the stage.

There are some downsides. The text is difficult to hear with so much movement. The near-constant activity pulls concentration away from the soloists. Some eye-popping moments seem more for effect than for organic comment on the story.

Still, this a major work, one that Long Leaf can be proud of, signaling that the company is carving a permanent niche for itself.