The bold idea to bring together operatic and circus arts to present baroque composer Christoph Willibald Gluck’s take on the tragic Greek myth about a musician, Orpheus, who travels to the Underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice, after she dies from a snake bite, has resulted in a refreshed, astonishingly physical and immersive production of this more than 250 year old work.
For what was Gluck’s intention to be opera based on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing, it perhaps shouldn’t be so surprising. Thanks to Opera Queensland Artistic Director Patrick Nolan’s vision, Orpheus and Eurydice – sung in Italian as Orfeo ed Euridice – becomes an invigoratingly rich and poetically drawn 80-minute showpiece.
Snapped up by Opera Australia for its latest reincarnation, the production illuminates Circa Ensemble Artistic Director and set designer Yaron Lifschitz’s reframing of the myth through movement, projection, and sculptural physicality. Operatic storytelling and contemporary circus converge with striking coherence. Along the way, musically and vocally it soared.
Lifschitz emphasises the story as a dream sequence surrounding the night of Orpheus and Eurydice’s wedding, after which Orpheus wakes up in an asylum, understanding Eurydice to be dead – a concept that lends itself well to its exploration of love, grief, letting go and the hazy territory between illusion and death.
From the get go, the sense that circus arts are there to support and elucidate the story is apparent as the vibrant, magisterial overture plays while Eurydice slowly descends from above in aerial twists and contortions.
The ensemble animates the emotional world in ways that fuse directly with the score. Bodies knot, mount each other to great vertical height and tumble in sculptural tableaux, they magically carry Orpheus and Eurydice at various points through the journey, flicker like flames in the Underworld and whirl around Orpheus in both torment and solace. The level of balletically enhanced acrobatics is gobsmacking. So effective is its integration that moments pass when distinguishing who it is from each of the two artistic camps blurs.
As part of the visual joy, design elements further ground the emotional clarity, highlighted by a simple rectilinear, galley-like space on which the English translation is projected on the rear wall and effervesce from one line to the next.
Alexander Berlage’s lighting sculpts the stage from harsh whites for a sense of clinical aesthetic and mourning, reds for the Furies and delicate gold for the Elysium Fields, while Boris Bagattini’s sparingly employed projections extend the visual realm seductively. And, in a cleverly delineated palette of black, white, red and warm flesh tones, Libby McDonnell’s costumes unify the aesthetic with a sense of contemporary elegance.
At the centre stands luminous British countertenor Iestyn Davies as Orfeo who delivers a spellbinding performance of profound emotive control. Davies’ Che farò senza Euridice? – a piece that perfectly paints the grief that Orpheus feels as he laments the loss of his true love – is the evening’s inevitable highlight but the artistry (and physicality) he achieves in arriving there truly captures Orpheus’ anguish that slowly morphs into mad hopelessness.
Opposite Davies, Australian-British soprano Samantha Clarke doubles as Eurydice and Amore in a piece of casting that adds emotional resonance and supports the story’s fractured reality. A sense of playful authority accompanies Clarke’s Amore and, as Eurydice, she gifts her audience with radiant, flexible vocals that blossom with warmth, notably in her reunion with Orpheus.
Under the baton of Dane Lam, Orchestra Victoria brought a crystal, elegant reading of Gluck’s beautifully textured score at Tuesday evening’s opening night. Orchestral interludes sparkled (while Circa’s acrobats mesmerised). And Lam’s sensitive, dramatic pacing throughout transferred energy to the stage with balance between music and vocals attentively handled.
The Opera Australia Chorus, bolstered by the Circa ensemble during the more movement-driven sections, united with incisive singing, particularly in the Furies’ sequence which they conjured with considerable menace.
Of course, Orpheus is forbidden to look at Eurydice when given the opportunity to retrieve her from the Underworld. He falters, only to suffer once again. Then, in a powerful gesture when Orpheus paints The Triumph of Love in blood on the rear wall, Lifschitz perhaps suggests a sense of irony and ambiguity in understanding love. Lifschitz follows with a final stage picture in which, referencing the beginning, Orpheus is hung by the feet, upside down, in a symbol of sacrifice or surrender – and what love itself may represent.
The result is a production that feels timeless, ritualistic and alive with contemporary immediacy. Across just four consecutive nights, local audiences have just a very brief window to experience something quite remarkable.
Orpheus and Eurydice
Regent Theatre, 191 Collins Street, Melbourne
Performance: Tuesday 2 December 2025
Season continues to 5 December 2025
Information and Bookings: www.opera.org.au
Images: Iestyn Davies as Orpheus and Samantha Clarke as Eurydice in Opera Australia’s production of Orpheus and Eurydice (2025) – photo by Jeff Busby | Samantha Clarke as Eurydice and Circa Ensemble in Opera Australia’s production of Orpheus and Eurydice (2025) – photo by Jeff Busby | Iestyn Davies as Orpheus and Circa Ensemble in Opera Australia’s production of Orpheus and Eurydice (2025) – photo by Jeff Busby | Opera Australia Chorus in Opera Australia’s production of Orpheus and Eurydice (2025) – photo by Jeff Busby
Review: Paul Selar