by usia review
Philip Glass’s Orphée at the CCB: Between Concept and Emptiness
Composed by Philip Glass and based on Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film, Orphée was presented at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon as an opera. Glass’s long-standing fascination with Cocteau is well known: he previously composed La Belle et la Bête (1994) and Les Enfants Terribles (1996), also inspired by the French writer’s works. This trilogy reflects Glass’s attraction to Cocteau’s symbolic universe, but it also exposes the aesthetic limitations of musical minimalism when applied to lyric theatre.
The dramatic structure of Orphée follows a simple and repetitive narrative arc: the boy loses the girl, the boy regains the girl, and the boy ultimately finds the girl again. This emotional circularity is mirrored by Glass’s musical language—cold, minimalist, and mechanically repetitive. Unfortunately, this musical austerity was fully reflected in the staging, which consisted of dozens of white chairs covering the stage. Rather than enhancing meaning, this visual concept severely restricted movement, leaving dancers and performers confined to awkward gestures and exaggerated miming, often without discernible dramatic purpose.
The result was a stage action that felt static, abstract, and emotionally opaque. Instead of illuminating Cocteau’s poetic symbolism, the production reduced it to a series of incomprehensible movements, distancing the audience rather than drawing it in.
From a vocal standpoint, the evening was particularly disappointing. Lyric singing, vocal technique, beauty of tone, and melodic inspiration—all essential elements of opera—were notably absent. The score offers little opportunity for expressive vocalism, and the production made no attempt to compensate for this deficiency. All singers were Portuguese, as was the conductor, Maestro Pedro Neves, but neither national representation nor professional commitment could overcome the intrinsic musical limitations of the work.
The myth of Orpheus has inspired some of the greatest operas in the history of music: L’Orfeo by Monteverdi; La Morte d’Orfeo by Landi; Euridice by Caccini; Euridice by Jacopo Peri; Orfeo by Rossi; and works by Sartorio, among others. Above all stands Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the most frequently performed operatic version of the myth, whose celebrated aria “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” remains one of the most moving moments in all opera, interpreted by countertenors, mezzo-sopranos, or tenors.
Compared with these masterpieces, Glass’s Orphée feels emotionally sterile and musically impoverished. While it may succeed as a conceptual or experimental theater piece, it fails to meet the fundamental expectations of opera as a lyrical art form—one that unites voice, melody, and drama in a profound human expression.
In the end, this Orphée left us reflecting not on loss, love, or transcendence, but on the growing distance between contemporary operatic concepts and the very essence of opera itself.
@TNSC
Thanks to: TNSC