Three performers take on same role in Opera Memphis' 'Orpheus'
Of all the Greek myths, the one about Orpheus walking into Hades to retrieve his beloved Eurydice from the bonds of death still gets people talking.
Orpheus was a master of the lyre. Pindar called him the “father of songs.” While traveling as an Argonaut, his music tamed the Sirens. They even named the Orpheum theater after him.
Photo by Brandon Dill
(Left to right) Marc Schreiner, Nicholas Tamagna and Kathryn Cowdrick each play the title role in "Orpheus", which opens at Opera Memphis on Friday.
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And yet, when composer Christoph Gluck debuted his finest opera “Orfeo ed Euridice” in 1762, the great hero was portrayed by a eunuch.
If that seems weird, consider this: When Opera Memphis stages its version of Gluck’s “Orpheus” this and next weekend at the Clark Opera Memphis Center, the leading role will be sung by a man, a woman, and a man who sings like the original eunuch.
For the opera company, “Orpheus” is something of a historical experiment.
On Friday nights, the hero is sung by Nicholas Tamagna, a Manhattan countertenor whose voice approximates the sound of a castrati, or a man who’d been castrated as a boy to preserve his high-pitched register, which was beloved by 18th Century Italians.
“In the Baroque period, people thought that hero characters were sort of celestial beings that came from a different hierarchy,” Tamagna said. “So they cast roles with castrati in mind. They thought of them as mediators between heaven and earth, human and god. People’s perception of what a hero should be was a higher key.”
The French, however, didn’t fancy the unnatural sound of castrati, and when Gluck took his opera to Paris a decade later, he rewrote the music for a tenor.
Marc Schreiner, a New York-based tenor, performs the role on Saturday nights.
“It’s not a role we usually get to sing,” he said. “Although some of the world’s great tenors have sung arias from ‘Orfeo.’ I love versions by Tito Schipa and Pavarotti.”
By the mid-19th Century, few castrati were left to sing the original version, and the role was taken over by mezzo-sopranos.
Kathryn Cowdrick, a vocal teacher at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., wears the orphic pants on Sundays.
“Clearly, I’m the other chromosome here,” Cowdrick said. “For me I don’t think about the part in terms of male or female. It think about the loss Orpheus felt at the death of his beloved. It’s a sucker punch.”
Staged at the Clark Opera Memphis Center, the production is unusual for its smaller scale and chamber-sized orchestra. Artistic director Michael Ching said that the short run time of an hour and a half and the theatricality of the direction makes it accessible to first-time opera-goers, though aficionados will have at least three reasons to like it.
“I’m really hopeful that we can get the geekier members of our audience to come back more than once, because it’s really a different experience with each singer,” he said. “Each of them grabs you emotionally in a different spot.”
“Orpheus”
Opera Memphis presents Gluck’s “Orpheus” at the Clark Opera Memphis Center, 6745 Wolf River Parkway. Shows are 7:30 p.m. Fridays (with countertenor Nicholas Tamagna, Saturdays (with tenor Marc Schreiner) and Sundays (with mezzo soprano Kathryn Cowdrick.), through Jan. 31. Tickets are $30, for the first time, $15 for second-timers. Call 257-3100.
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