Lyster Opera is known for touring high-quality professional opera to regional communities across Victoria. It has a strong commitment to accessibility and audience connection. For the first time the company is touring with a full chamber orchestra that will bring new musical depth and immediacy to this landmark work.
Christopher Willibald Gluck composed the Paris version of Orpheus and Eurydice in 1774, expanding and refining the score and assigning the title role to a tenor. Lyster Opera is proud to feature acclaimed tenor Hew Wagner as Orpheus in the Creswick performance. One of the most demanding roles in the operatic repertoire, Orpheus requires exceptional stamina, expressive depth and dramatic intensity - qualities for which Wagner is widely admired.
The opera tells the ancient Greek story of Orpheus, devastated by the death of his wife Eurydice. Permitted by the Gods to journey into the underworld, he confronts the terrifying Furies of Hades and is reunited withEurydice, only to face a cruel test of love, trust, and human frailty.
Gluck's emotionally direct and profoundly human setting to the opera is said to be his most popular and heartbreaking work.
Directed by Jamie Moffat, with Pamela Christie providing musical direction and conducting the chamber orchestra, the new designs by Blair Parkinson (sets) and Maddy Connellan (costumes) create a vivid and immersive theatrical world to complement Gluck's powerful score.
