ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
Edinburgh International Festival
★★★★★
“This is a finely wrought work, every element chosen with precision”
The theatre curtain glows with a looping projection—what many today would call a “boomerang”, though not of the Australian variety. The image fades. In the pit, the live orchestra tunes. The curtain rises to reveal an aerial artist suspended in a mist of golden haze, dressed in crimson, as she tumbles and falls while descending. It is Eurydice’s death on her wedding night—her plunge into the underworld. The image is both haunting and beautiful. Our evening of visual poetry begins.
The ancient story: Eurydice dies on her wedding day, and Orpheus, the world’s greatest musician, journeys to Hades to bring her back—on one cruel condition: he must not look at her until they have left the underworld. In this staging, Orpheus awakens in an asylum, visited by Amor, who offers the same bargain—the Greeks and their Sisyphean tasks, the test of patience, the temptation to turn too soon. We think we know how this ends. We read, “Love triumphs.” But does it?
The star is Christoph Gluck’s luminous score, performed with clarity and elegance by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the Chorus of Scottish Opera under the baton of Laurence Cummings. Another standout is the collaboration of several artistic forces, including direction and scenic design by Yaron Lifschitz, choreography by Lifschitz, Bridie Hooper, and the Circa ensemble. Costumes are by Libby McDonnell, video design by Boris Bagattini. Countertenor Iestyn Davies gives Orpheus a voice of ache and purity, while Samantha Clarke sings both Eurydice and Amor with grace and power. The movement artists are the kinetic heart of the piece—always in motion, inhabiting the liminal space between myth and dream, unflinchingly hurling themselves into these underworlds of kinetic flow.
The set is a white box. Other small structures appear, then vanish. Supertitles are video-mapped onto the back wall, integrated into the scenery before decaying and falling away, like Eurydice’s first descent.
The colour palette is stark: white, black, and red. The language is that of symbols, each one dissolving into the next. The chorus becomes part of the set; dancers counterbalance against walls, walk horizontally when lifted, roll, and dive along vertical planes. There is no safety net.
A green circle of grass appears; red petals rain gently down. Three male dancers share a breathtaking trio, weaving, diving, and cascading over and under one another. Dancers mask and unmask, building impossible towers of bodies. The production flows from one potent image to the next—each a tableau of loss, longing, and fragile, precarious triumph.
This is a finely wrought work, every element chosen with precision. Music meets voice, meets movement, meets circus. Opera and contemporary circus intertwine in a pas de deux—tumbling, floating, weightless. Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice is brought back from the underworld, but in this telling, we should not avert our gaze. Perhaps we should never look away.
ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE
Edinburgh International Festival
This show is a European production premiere with Opera Australia, presenting Opera Queensland’s production of Orpheus and Eurydice in association with Circa
Reviewed on 13th August 2025 at Edinburgh Playhouse
by Louis Kavouras
Photography by Jess Shurte
