Poor Orphée is distraught. We know this because he's been flailing about the stage for more than an hour in Orphée et Eurydice, maniacally waving his tiny cherub harp. Deep in the underworld to rescue his dead wife, Eurydice, he must appease the dark spirits by being the best singer ever. But lo! Because the angel of love is a cheeky little tinker, she's decreed that Orphée can't lay eyes on his wife during the rescue mission or she'll die. This is basically the dialogue in the final act:
Please, baby, look at me!
Nope!
Oh, come on. Am I ugly or something?
Woman!
Look at me, Orphée! Admit it, compared to these svelte spirits, I look super-fat in this dress!
I can't, sugar booger.
Bwaaaaaaaaa! You don't love me!
Okay, one little peek.
Then she dies. Orphée is now even more distraught. Tenor William Burden throws himself down and cries. No toddler has ever flailed like Burden flails and wails. I won't ruin the super-secret ending of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice that's been made into 70 different operas because, as we discussed, it's super-secret. (Okay, twist my arm—she lives!) The important thing: Despite Orphée's cartoonish performance by Burden—who has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera and everywhere else important, but dragged down the performance and music on opening night here—Seattle Opera has crafted a haunting, elegant production.
At its core, Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice is about discipline. Translated from Italian to French in 1774, Orphée represents a pivotal reform in opera that eschewed florid excess. This is not the prior era's musical porn flick—in which the dialogue was merely a stepping-stone to segue from one orgasmic aria to the next—but a concise alignment of lyrics that carry the plot. Gluck's score is likewise succinct, characterized by an almost militant Germanic efficiency in meter and phrasing. This reflects the Orpheus myth itself: By complete focus on your love despite rejection, the benevolent gods will grant you harmony. Just be disciplined and endure.
In that vein, director Jose Maria Condemi's production at Seattle Opera is deliberate and forceful. With sets designed by Phillip Lienau, the elysian fields are framed by perfectly rounded Teletubby hills, festooned with flowers and hot lovers in simple suits that look like scrubs. Flutters of yellow rain tinkle in front of a pure blue sky. The underworld is a net of desiccated meat fibers magnified to gigantic proportions. Those dark spirits, the Furies, are enrobed in red-and-black elasticized hoods that restrict their writhing, an inspired creation of costumer Heidi Zamora. Musically, the 28-person chorus of Orphée functions as a tightly knit machine, at its most dynamic as the Furies in the second act.
But Burden as Orphée makes no sense in this ordered cosmos. He looks studly and has a sterling pedigree—his goofy acting would be excusable if his voice could carry the show. But even that is never strong, only serviceable. It's like casting Jim Carrey in Schindler's List, choosing Gumby to play Miranda Priestly, or putting Barney the singing dinosaur in Braveheart.
The tragedy of Orphée is that the director allowed a worm inside an otherwise crisp apple. 
