Some Thoughts on the Met's Orfeo

I thought that the Met's production of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice was, well, a bit like cotton candy: awfully tasty, but lacking nourishment. Now, of course, not all of this is the Met's fault. There's only so much one can do with Gluck's in some ways overly ambitious attempt at Gesamtkunstwerk. I hate to be curmudgeonly, but I just don't think that Mizrahi's costumes for the chorus (everyone from Moses to Elizabeth I to Hiawatha) added anything to the production, and in fact distracted from what Gluck (and de'Calzabigi) were attempting to do. In any event, I enjoyed Mark Morris's dances, and indeed, Stephanie Blythe's Orfeo was every bit as heroic as one could wish, with a voice by turns heart-rendingly dusky and gallantly soaring. But it was ultimately Heidi Grant Murphy's Amor that summed up the production for me: chirpy, thin and ultimately forgettable.