Ask philosopher Slavoj Žižek what Eurydice and opera have in common, and he’ll probably have two words for you: double death. In Greek mythology, Eurydice dies twice: first from a snakebite, then when her husband breaks the one rule meant to save her.
Opera arose in Renaissance courts from an attempt to resurrect ancient Greek tragedy. By the dawn of the 20th century, the aristocratic world that had sustained it was dying. Yet its works are revived season after season, connecting us with composers and musical styles centuries apart. There’s something almost necromantic about going to the opera: like Orpheus with Eurydice, we keep taking it by the hand, trying to lead it back from the underworld.
and baritone Christopher Dunham as Tantalus with tenor Daniel McGrew as Orpheus in Opera Atelier’s production of Charpentier’s The Descent of Orpheus (Photo: Bruce Zinger)
As Orpheus’ example illustrates, the difficulty is doing this without looking back. No one knows, for instance, what Orpheus’s lyre sounded like. In Marc Antoine Charpentier’s late-17th-century chamber opera La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, three violas da gamba give the mythical instrument its voice through long, languid phrases. These bowed instruments, rare in modern opera orchestras, are more familiar to specialised early-music ensembles such as Toronto’s Tafelmusik.
The rest of Charpentier’s ensemble consists of two violins, a lute, two recorders and a harpsichord — an intimate arrangement well-suited to an opera originally intended for private performances in aristocratic households. At Koerner Hall, Christopher Bagan’s musical direction lends the score a playful rhythmic vitality. His harpsichord drives a restless basso continuo from the left; the strings answer from the right in lingering phrases, as though trying to arrest its buoyant flow: to stop time and defy life’s transience.
Onstage, this reconstruction of the past takes a more extravagant turn. Gerard Gauci’s set evokes an aristocratic palace, with round paintings mounted on wooden pillars and tapestries suspended in midair. The largest wall hanging serves as a canvas for symbolic or CGI-esque projections throughout the performance. The singing is similarly stylised: in it, rhetorical declamation meets taut, almost feverish vibrato. Particularly spellbinding is tenor Daniel McGrew as Orpheus, combining statuesque poses with a full-bodied voice and distinctively twangy timbre.
The opera opens in celebration, with Orpheus and his beloved Eurydice (soprano Mireille Asselin) surrounded by song and dance. Eight dancers navigate the confined stage with remarkable precision in Jeannette Lajeunesse-Zingg’s fluttering choreography. They return throughout the opera, lending physical expression to instrumental passages, without always assuming identifiable roles in the drama. When a snakebite kills Eurydice and Orpheus contemplates suicide, his father Apollo (Olivier Bergeron) urges him to descend into the underworld and retrieve her. At this point, Bergeron wraps his arms around his son, singing with a soft, affecting delicacy.
and baritone Christopher Dunham as Tantalus with tenor Daniel McGrew as Orpheus in Opera Atelier’s production of Charpentier’s The Descent of Orpheus (Photo: Bruce Zinger)
Elsewhere, pantomime reigns: passions erupt in emphatic gestures, then freeze into poses as still as marble — think of Bernini’s exuberant sculptures. Director Marshall Pynkoski’s penchant for Mannerist grandeur draws on a historically informed taste for excess, but sometimes comes at the expense of musical cohesion. In the underworld, Ixion (Alexander Cappellazzo), Tantalus (Christopher Dunham) and Tityus (Bergeron) are splayed like crucified figures across three wheels. As Orpheus and Persephone (mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel, her voice dark and resonant) plead with Pluto (David Witczak) to release Eurydice, Pynkoski sends Witczak racing frantically across the stage. Such theatrical excess distracts from the otherwise finely balanced musical interplay.
Before Charpentier’s score begins, Opera Atelier offers a prologue: Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 1903 art song Orpheus with his Lute. Clad in a silver sequinned evening gown by Michael Gianfrancesco, Measha Brueggergosman-Lee delivers this sinuous piece with assured command, navigating striking shifts from piano to forte within a single breath. The juxtaposition is emblematic: an early-20th-century song infused with Baroque expressiveness and mannerist flair.
Such is opera’s unique capacity to bring distant centuries back from the underworld of distant time and memory … into contemporary conversation.
© Alessandro Stracuzzi, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
