The award-winning pair’s previous critical dance successes at Edinburgh include Conjunto di Nero and Rimasto Orfano in 2002, Double Points: One & Two in 2001 and Extra Dry in 2000. At the behest of the Edinburgh Intenational Festival director Brian McMaster, eager for Greco and Scholten to return to the festival programme, they are now tackling their first opera.
“I very much thought that Emio Greco’s participation in Orfeo ed Euridice was, at a deep level, something he should do. And the unique pairing of Greco and Pieter Scholten’s talents were matched by the uniqueness of an opera in which dance takes the story forward,” says McMaster.
Orfeo ed Euridice was Gluck’s first “reform” opera, in which he turned his back on the 18th-century fashion for extravagance and lavish displays of vocal virtuosity, concentrating instead on the dramatic fundamentals. He later reworked the opera for the Parisian market.
“It’s really the opera seen from the point of view of dance,” says Scholten. “That’s the way we’ve worked. It might even have been without actual dancing, because we are offering what we know dance can give to the opera — that essence, that understanding.”
“The choreography,” Greco chips in, “becomes itself a way of directing. It contains more than just the pleasure of dancing. It says so much more. For us the ballet cannot be autonomous. We wanted to connect these different art forms on the same stage, in the same dramatic event, and through our choreographic language to conquer perhaps some of the difficulties of this opera.”
Advertisement
Nicholas Kok, who is conducting the work in Edinburgh, says that with the Amsterdam-based Greco and Scholten temporarily at Opera North in Leeds, he’s “been on at these two poor guys for ever about the dances”.
“I think there’s a subtle kind of harmonic structure in the piece which when you take them (the dances) out really suffers. And the piece is so concise in terms of its libretto. It’s incredible. So without the dance numbers the piece just implodes. What’s been so wonderful about this production is that the dances have become part and parcel of the dramatic process.”
But Scholten is determined the dance has to earn its right to be in Orfeo ed Euridice. “The dance has to exist with dignity and to have a reason. It’s never used to illustrate the action. Everybody knows the story, and it’s presented very clearly by the singers. The dance adds different layers to that, in an associative way. When dance threatens to become illustrative, we take it out,” he says, although only one dance number has fallen by the wayside.
For all the music’s fluidity, Orfeo ed Euridice is still a work of its own time — it premiered in Vienna in 1762, and is quite a formal piece. Will Edinburgh audiences see a formalised style of movement?
“Not everyday movement, no,” says Greco. “There is an articulation in the body which is not suffocated by the form, but comes from a natural stream inside. Something running inside the body. A string of energy. It’s something that can be articulated quite precisely.”
Advertisement
Scholten and Greco have treated the chorus in the Greek fashion. “In the libretto they represent specific characters: mourners with Orfeo, for instance, and later on the furies. But this is completely broken with us,” explains Greco.
“They create a kind of energy, they explain the opera, their presence is a fluctuating one. It’s something much more vital, and inexplicable in words. We try to give them as much abstraction as we can, so they have reason and power.”
Singing Orfeo in Edinburgh and in all but one performance during the subsequent Leeds run is the gifted Canadian countertenor Daniel Taylor, whose character dominates the piece, despite a lack of big arias.
“Che faro senza Euridice?, for all its fame, is a modest sort of piece,” says Kok. “There’s nothing comparable with the fireworks you have in Handel, even though the character is a singer, there’s very little melismatic writing and coloratura. And even in his biggest moments, in his act two aria Che puro ciel, for instance, he doesn’t have everything all to himself. But it’s still an enormous role, really physical, and an incredible undertaking for whoever sings it. Daniel (Taylor) has a wonderful voice.”
Scholten and Greco aim to combine that great voice with the physical demands of the role. “He’s a singer, a pure singer. That was what we liked with him. Now we are balancing in which direction he can go. The voice and the body has to go through a journey,” says Scholten.
Advertisement
It’s a journey that many will be fascinated to share come curtain up.
Orfeo ed Euridice, Edinburgh Festival Theatre, Sep 1, 3 & 4