Review: THE DESCENT OF ORPHEUS at Koerner Hall

Opera Atelier presented a lively top-shelf performance of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s The Descent of Orpheus (c. 1686), making for a pleasant evening of early music and dance. Like many Baroque operas, it is based on a Greek myth. The tale of Orpheus with his lyre descending into the underworld to rescue his dead lover Eurydice was especially popular source material for composers and librettists of the 17th and 18th centuries. The story is familiar and straightforward and doesn’t take very long to tell. This performance ran about 90 minutes, including an intermission. It also opened with a gorgeous performance by Opera Atelier Artist in Residence Meesha Brueggergosman-Lee of “Orpheus with his Lyre” by Canadian composer Ralph Vaughn Williams. It is a 20th-century art song in a Baroque imitative style.

Opera Atelier specializes in 17th- and 18th-century works, and Co-Artistic Directors Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg are highly adept at bringing them to life with fidelity to the conventions of the time. Impressively, they manage to do this in a way that never feels tone deaf to modern sensibilities and values. Productions incorporate ballet and use delicate, airy period instruments. The finished product is usually a whirl of vibrant colour, dulcet vocals, and peerless old-school stagecraft.

This new production delivers on all of these aspects. Singers were accompanied by the Tafelmusik Baroque chamber ensemble in a pit that was essentially a trench carved right into the stage at Koerner Hall. The dancers and singers were dressed in rich, ornately beaded jewel tones in vibrant satins and tactile velvets. The choreography was some of the most athletic and free-spirited I have seen from this company. Synchronized high kicks and jumps followed by dizzying spins abounded, with the dancers’ simultaneous landings on the stage functioning as percussion against the orchestra.

Daniel McGrew, making his debut for Opera Atelier, was radiant in the role of Orpheus. For lovers of good singing, he is a must-hear performer. His voice glimmers brightly with a fruity, slightly tart sweetness and razor-focused, uncovered edge. His ability to infuse his voice with emotion is magnificent. For example, his trills, while technically flawless, were far from ornamental and instead seemed as though his voice was sincerely shaking with emotion.

Opera Atelier favourite Mireille Asselin was lovely in a relatively brief appearance as Eurydice, lending her warm gossamer soprano to the Act I aria in which Eurydice is bitten and killed by a snake. David Witczak's molasses baritone was suitably commanding and foreboding in the role of underlord Pluto. Mireille Lebel leaned into the morose dimension of her amber-honey mezzo soprano to bring trapped Persephone’s misery to life.

Despite high production value and strong performances, the energy didn’t come together for me, and the vibe felt kind of ho-hum. The fairly casual performances from most of the cast felt in almost jarring contrast to Mr. McGrew's palpably raw, impassioned performance. There were also passages in both acts where it felt as though the conductor (Christopher Bagan), orchestra, and performers were not entirely on the same page about rhythmic patterns and tempi. I also heard some dissonances that sounded unlikely to appear in a Baroque score.

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