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Spooky opera in cellars of Laplace
Something out of the ordinary is going on at the Laplace
building. Haunting music is to be heard underneath all the noise
of the renovation work on the ground floor. If you took the lift
down to 1 last week, you might have encountered people singing
moving arias in a weirdly lit, labyrinthine décor.
During the coming week, the renowned
Dutch opera company 'Opera Zuid' will be performing an interpretation
of Claudio Monteverdi's opera 'L'Orfeo' in the cellars of Laplace.
This enormous space has fallen into disuse since TU/e's computers
no longer need massive cooling facilities, but seems ideal as
the basis of the set for this opera in which the main character
has to travel down to hell to rescue his true love.
Special effects
For the price of a twenty guilder ticket (for students and Ph.D.
students, forty guilders for TU/e staff), the audience may wander
at will through an eerie rendering of Hades. The performance is
based on the classical opera, but director Henk Schut sends his
audience down into Hades along with his cast, choir and musicians.
The action keeps moving around. There are only 150 tickets available
for every performance, 75 for men and 75 for women. The opera
will be sung in Italian, but the audience can easily follow the
story through the acting and the special effects. Schut is secretive
about this last aspect and is not planning to give anything away
before the tonight's premiere.
Schut has a lot of experience in directing opera in unlikely settings,
mainly in the U.K. He has become fond of unusual locations, and
has said they help him get to the original ideas behind theatre.
"Here in the cellars of Laplace there is no way you can perform
an opera traditionally. In a theatre you tend to do things in
tried and tested ways. Here, I'm using the space to help me tell
the story," says Schut.
Oldest opera
L'Orfeo, composed by Claudio Monteverdi in 1607, is seen as one
of the first operas. It is unquestionably the oldest opera still
being performed. At the time it was a very innovative piece, and
according to Schut this makes it suitable for unconventional treatment
even 400 years down the line.
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is part of ancient Greek mythology.
Orpheus is a great singer. He is wildly happy to be married to
Eurydice when fate strikes. The lovely bride is bitten by a snake
and dies. Orpheus cannot accept this and decides to travel down
to Hades to get her back. He enchants the gods with his singing
and wins her safe passage to the other side. There is only one
condition. Eurydice must follow him, and Orpheus is forbidden
to look back during the whole return trip.
The premiere of L'Orfeo at TU/e is on September 27. Other performances
on September 28, 29, 30 and October 2. All at 8 p.m. Matinees
are planned for September 30 and October 3. Tickets are available
from Studium Generale (040 247 49 00) or the Stadschouwburg, the
city theatre, (040 211 11 22)./.