The first joint production of ballet company and opera ensemble approaches one of the great classics of opera and ballet history: Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice triggered a revolution in 1762 - Gluck broke away from the rigid forms of his predecessors and achieved the highest musical effects through concentration and simplicity. An essential component of the plot, which is limited to three individual characters, is the chorus and ballet.
The new Hanover production also aims to refine our view of human rituals and processions as well as Orpheus' inhuman longing to regain his beloved Eurydice from the realm of the dead. Together with Italian choreographer Diego Tortelli, Belgian director Lisaboa Houbrechts, who is celebrated in her home country for her multi-layered, vibrant musical theater works, sets out in search of the light in the darkness, the blackness in the glistening white. And for the movements in "the soul's wondrous mine" (Rainer Maria Rilke).
"Christoph Willibald Gluck was a great innovator: he left behind the display of virtuosity of his contemporaries and wrote Orfeo ed Euridice, an opera that tells the special story of the two lovers with unprecedented clarity and purity. Sophisticated simplicity also dominates the ballet music, which he integrates into the narrative in the French tradition and which virtually invites us to shape the piece with dance". (Benjamin Bayl, conductor)
Premiere March 22, 2024
Further performances: March 24, 3, 13, 18, 21, 24 and 27 April and on May 17, 2024
