Take one hallowed operatic masterpiece and mix, mash, fuse or, better, unite it with Indian ragas and tala, song and dance. Handpick a cast of classically trained musicians of the western tradition and ask them to share Claudio Monteverdi’s 1607 opera, Orfeo, with British-born performers steeped in a wide-ranging classical Indian heritage. Any attempt to guess how Opera North’s collaboration with its Leeds-based neighbour, South Asian Arts, might work was destined to be wide of the mark. The results, flowing seamlessly between Italian and Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi and Bengali, as well as between musical styles, were richer and more rewarding than even the most upbeat prophesy.
Billed as a “reimagining”, the haunting story remains the same: Orpheus the musician tries to retrieve his dead wife, Eurydice, from the underworld, but looks back and in so doing loses her for ever. The staging, by Anna Himali Howard, fixes the action in the lovingly nurtured back garden of an end-of-terrace house of the kind found in any UK town or city. The event is the wedding party of Orpheus and Eurydice; the musicians – whether playing violin or theorbo, tabla or esraj – are among the guests. The designs by Leslie Travers and team achieve a clever union of real and surreal (makers of rugs, balloons, textiles, backcloth, as well as head gardener, are among the many credited). Fairy lights illuminate the garden. Costumes display the bright, bejewelled colours of celebration. The language of Greek myth and baroque opera has become the vernacular of modern family life in 21st-century Britain. The question posed is the biggest any human has to ask: how to deal with grief.
