[Met Performance] CID:190570



Orfeo ed Euridice
Metropolitan Opera House, Wed, March 21, 1962




Orfeo ed Euridice (65)
Christoph Willibald Gluck | Ranieri de' Calzabigi
Orfeo
Kerstin Meyer

Euridice
Gabriella Tucci

Amore
Anneliese Rothenberger

Dance
Katharyn Horne

Dance
Carole Kroon

Dance
Arthur Mitchell

Dance
Ron Sequoio

Dance
Violette Verdy

Dance
Richard Zelens


Conductor
Jean Morel







Review 1:

Review of Ronald Eyer in the Herald Tribune

"Orfeo ed Euridice" revisited was, to me, as delightful an experience as the first time around. We had a new Euridice last night in the charming person of Gabriella Tucci, a young Italian soprano who has been doing a very good job since her debut this season, but seems to have made no major splash.

Well, here's one hundred per cent vote for her as Euridice. She has the completely feminine pliancy and pretty petulance that the role so urgently requires, but she also has great dignity and the classic reserve without which Gluck and his whole era go out of focus.

Her singing reflects her demeanor, and vice versa. The voice is robust rather than big. It is very bright - perhaps lustrous is the word - at the top, and you know she can let it out in the impassioned moments of Verdi or Puccini with the best of them. But she can contain it too. And she knows the meaning of style. Gluck was Gluck, and no meanderings into the by-ways of voice show-casing.

Her vocal production, what I heard of it (she doesn't get a real chance to sing until the last act) was relaxed and easy. The music held no terrors for her either in range or in complexity, and she was at one in the scene of the return to earth with her Orfeo, Kirsten Meyer.

Miss Meyer, in turn, again impressed as a thoroughly schooled, serious and high-style Orfeo. She has narrowed the vibrato in her voice since her debut performance here in the role, and the low range of her mezzo-soprano is sounding particularly warm and delicious. She is an artist of great distinction who is making first-class utility of a not quite first-class natural endowment.

The production as a whole is holding up well. The chorus sang almost as beautifully as I said they did the first time. Anneliese Rothenberger again was charming as Amore. And the ballet, featuring Violette Verdy and Arthur Mitchell, again danced with grace and a fine show of technique, if I may say so without warrant of our distinguished dance critic.

Only the orchestra, conducted by Jean Morel, sounded coarse from time to time and in need of classical polish.



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