Orfeo ed Euridice | Oper in drei Akten von Christoph Willibald Gluck

In the organizer's words:

Guest performance Staatstheater Augsburg

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice revolves around the myth of one love that transcends all boundaries: a cruel fate has snatched the singer Orpheus from his beloved wife Eurydice. She is dead, and since then lamentation has taken the place of his singing. In wild despair, he decides to bring Eurydice back from the realm of the dead. The gods are moved by his loyalty and allow him to descend into the underworld to bring his beloved wife back up.

The only condition: He must not even look at her the entire way until they reach the upper world, and he must persistently conceal this commandment. With his song, Orpheus appeases the wild hound of hell and forces the spirits of the shadow realm to release Eurydice. But she is very alienated by her husband's behavior - not a look, not a word. Eurydice cannot bear this apparent disregard
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First performed in 1762, this opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck was a political issue. Gluck wanted to open up the theater to new audiences; opera should no longer be the sole preserve of court society. He challenged the old baroque opera with its endless arias, graceful but lifeless ornamentation, affected characters and stories that were difficult to understand. He wanted to bring a clear plot, believable people with true feelings who sing in a natural way to the stage. The exciting thing about "Orfeo ed Euridice" is that you can experience the drastic reform in this very opera. At first, Orpheus and Eurydice move back and forth between the means of baroque and contemporary opera, until Gluck finally resolves this ambivalence. Two people who live together without being allowed to look each other in the eye openly express their conflict: Why don't you love me anymore? Do you no longer speak to me? Gluck found a breathtaking new form of expression here: the bourgeois tragedy in music.

The Staatstheater Augsburg uses this innovative power of the myth of the hero who overcomes death with the power of music and the power of love to try out new ways of theatrical storytelling: The underworld becomes a virtual 360° world. The audience alternately experiences the classical stage action and - via VR glasses - the underworld, into which they descend together with Orfeo. The communal theater experience is expanded by the dimension of the individual experience of a virtual reality.

In addition, the Augsburg State Theatre adds special instruments such as the lute and cornett to the Augsburg Philharmonic Orchestra and performs in historically informed practice.