Orphée et Eurydice by Gluck at the Opéra Comique in Paris

Love beyond death: inconsolable, the poet Orpheus follows his wife Eurydice to the Underworld. Christoph Willibald Gluck managed to free the opera from its formal Baroque straitjacket and open it up to the classical era. Raphaël Pichon conducts, while the title roles are sung by Marianne Crebassa and Hélène Guilmette.

The myth of Orpheus, a poet and singer from Thrace, whose voice was so beautiful that it could even conquer death, is one of the most popular themes in the operatic repertoire. L’ Orfeo, Monteverdi's first opera (whose score has been handed down to us) tells of his descent into the kingdom of the dead. The mythological poet is thus to be found at the very beginnings of the history of opera. Some 250 years later, Gluck returned to this legend during the great reform that marks the transition from the baroque to the classical genre. The German composer tried to free Italian opera from its formalist straitjacket and open it up to the dramatic intensity of the plot. Today, Orphée et Eurydice is one of his most performed operas. The version proposed by the Opéra Comique is the French version reworked by Berlioz in 1859 for the singer Pauline Viardot.

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