ORFEO ED EURIDICE
30 March 2025, 11 a.m.
In Brief
Opera in three acts, in Italian, with Hungarian and English surtitles
According to the myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld for his dead lover, Eurydice, but he can only take her back with him is he does not look at her, if he does not look back as they return to the land of the living. Director Zita Szenteczki is not the first to find a special meaning to the title characters’ relationship in Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Does the man really want to get the woman back? Does the woman really want to return to the man? The piece was already performed in the Solti Hall of the Liszt Academy in 2016, and now it is brought to the stage of Eiffel Art Studios in a new, special version in which Orpheus is played by the conductor himself.
Details
- Location
- Eiffel Art Studios – Miklós Bánffy Stage
- Date
- March 30, 2025
- Start time
- 11 a.m.
- End time
- 12:30 p.m.
Synopsis
The Thracian minstrel Orfeo has a voice that enchants everybody and everything, softening the stones and taming the wild beasts. After a snakebike leaves his young wife, Euridice, dead, Orfeo's song of lamentation moves the chief of the gods himself, who sends Amor to Orfeo with a message: the minstrel can get back his wife from the realm of death – with one condition: Orfeo may not look behind him on the way back, and also may not tell her of this test he must pass. Orfeo intrepidly descends into the Underworld, and even the Furies are softened by his mournful singing and allow him into the realm of Hades. Euridice is reawakened from the dead, and Orfeo rushes to return to the surface with his wife, although taking care not to look at her. Euridice, however, would prefer death to living an unhappy life with an alienated husband. Before they reach the end of their journey, Orfeo is unable to bear the trial any longer: he glances back at Euridice, who immediately sinks back into the land of the dead.