There’s quite a lot to like in Opera Atelier’s current production of Gluck’s Orphée et Euridice currently running at the Elgin Theatre. It’s elegant and refined with some pretty good singing but maybe it’s a bit too refined. It’s at its best in things like “The Dance of the Blessed Spirits” where there’s an effective pas de deux danced in pointe shoes though I’m not sure it was really necessary to use enough “smoke” to fill the entire auditorium! Unfortunately, the production doesn’t make much of the potentially more dramatic moments. Orphée’s confrontation with the Guardians of Hell is pretty low key. The demons are just dancers in slightly stripey body stockings and there’s no sense of menace. It’s all a bit Robert Wilson. Until the ending, which suddenly switches aesthetic with glitter and streamers and dancers with a Scrabble set.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in a busy November.
Dean Burry’s setting of Alfred Noyes’ The Highwayman has now been released on CD. I think it’s the same performance that was previously released on Youtube by Queen’s University. If it’s not the same performance then it’s certainly the same performers and I really don’t have more than a few incidental thoughts to add to 
