Edinburgh International Festival reviews: Orpheus and Eurydice | Bonsori Kim & Thomas Hoppe

OPERA

Orpheus and Eurydice ★★★★

Playhouse

Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, by the very nature of its dance sequences, invites additional physical input to its operatic presentation, as numerous Festival productions have illustrated in the past. But circus acrobats? That was the spectacle before us in a staging that brings together Australian circus ensemble Circa with Opera Queensland, Scottish Opera Chorus and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

Orpheus and Eurydice | Jess Shurte

In Circa director Yaron Lifschitz’s provocative vision, we have Eurydice, already dead, descending through the overture on suspended straps. Orpheus awakens in a stark asylum – has he murdered his wife? He’s haunted incessantly by manic tumbling creatures, generic projections of him and Eurydice, whose later sculptural tableau as the Furies is memorably fearsome.

This is Circa, whose omnipresence is feverish and portentous. The physical trajectory – punchy choreography from Lifshitz and Bridie Cooper – is ever downwards, the very first collapsing human pyramid issuing a visceral gasp from the Playhouse audience.

READ MORE: EIF opera Orpheus and Eurydice to feature 'acrobats doing very dangerous things'

If, at times, this Orpheus and Eurydice veers towards the visually excessive – hard to focus completely on an aria when the circus is in town – it presents us with so much food for thought. And it presents a challenge well met by both key singers. Countertenor Iestyn Davies, in his first staged performance as Orpheus, plays it safe-ish in physical terms, but is vocally pleasing. Samatha Clarke, doubling here as Amor, presents a magnetic persona. The Scottish Opera Chorus are a sturdy, meaningful organism.

As is the SCO, working stylishly throughout under the swift-footed direction of conductor Laurence Cummings. Their modest efficiency is their strength, a purifying voice of reason to the wildness on stage and the brutal electrifying starkness of Alexander Berlage’s lighting design. In the end, the truth is laid bare by Orpheus, painting in blood a motto that both chills and thrills. Love and death are fatefully intertwined.

KEN WALTON

MUSIC

Bonsori Kim & Thomas Hoppe ★★★★

Queen’s Hall

For Bonsori Kim and Thomas Hoppe’s contribution to the EIF’s Focus on Poland yesterday at the Queen’s Hall, it was as if the whole recital had been building up to the final breathtaking climax of Wieniawski’s Fantasy on Themes from Faust, taken from the opera by Gounod. Here, Kim, born and brought up in South Korea, showed exactly why she was a prize-winner in the 2016 Wieniawski Violin Competition. The most assured and liberated playing of the morning, it was technically virtuosic at every twist and turn, but stylish and witty too.

READ MORE: Canvas of Sound with Tazeen Qayyum at EIF: 'There's something special about seeing an artist working live'

With her own, personal focus on championing music from Poland, another showstopper, the Polish Caprice by Bacewicz, at only three minutes long was a lesson in how powerful music in miniature form can be. At first, especially in the opening meandering lines of Faure’s Violin Sonata No 1, Kim and Hoppe didn’t always feel completely matched in approach to tone, the piano’s softened edges warmer than the clean, sweet violin sound. But with listening hard, what could seem indistinct, for instance in the fiery Tarantella by Szymanowski, was actually there in detail in both parts, delivered with passion, energy and engagement.

CAROL MAIN

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