Orpheus in the Underworld
Simon Butteriss, Director of Orpheus in the Underworld, shares his inspiration and aspirations for our 2025 production…
What should our audience expect from your production of Orpheus in the Underworld?
Well, I hope a lot of fun. It’s an irreverent piece, full of naughtiness and exuberance but it’s a great score – it has heart and tenderness too.
What moments in the opera are you most looking forward to bringing to the stage?
There are so many. I can’t wait to plunge into rehearsals with our sparky and very talented cast and we’ll have our work cut out to bring you Heaven, Hell, Hilarity and High kicks in a wittily coherent whole. If there are favourite milestones along the way, that’s a bonus.
What was the inspiration behind the setting, and how does that setting and design affect the story?
Offenbach and his librettists had their tongues firmly in their cheeks and as 19th century paintings of gods and Arcadian shepherds are, to our eyes, faintly preposterous, I wanted to use those paintings as a starting point and for the sets to look like 19th century stage settings – prettily painted on canvas, leaning more towards artificial than literal nature. Offenbach’s sense of fun is very front foot and theatrical and I want the look to remind us of that.
What are the key inspirations for this production?
We had a lot of fun with Die Fledermaus last year, creating a full-blown production when the original idea was for a semi-staged concert performance, so for Orpheus in the Underworld this year, we decided on a similar format. Jupiter, King of the Gods, as he roams the earth endorsing immorality (just like Wagner’s Wotan, who appeared on the operatic stage a decade later – where Offenbach went Wagner followed…) will keep us pithily abreast of what’s going on, while others will interrupt him with their own incisive point of view. It should have a cracking pace, which gives us time to insert some glorious numbers from Offenbach’s revised version that didn’t feature in the original score.
What excites you most about this opera?
I love it that the muscular irreverence of its score is balanced by such tenderness, heart and charm but that it also has some serious points to make. Public Opinion (or Social Media as we might now see her) has no business interfering in private lives that she knows nothing of and, in Offenbach’s version of the myth, both Orpheus and Eurydice manage to find happiness, while Public Opinion gets a flea in her ear. Early critics complained that Offenbach’s treatment of the classic story was blasphemous but the ludicrous happy ending Gluck endorses is no closer to the original myth, in which both protagonists end up dead – Orpheus variously ripped to pieces by beasts or women, his disembodied head floating off to Lesbos - and I think that might have upset the Parisian critics rather more! Besides, Offenbach’s version is much funnier.
Why should audiences see Orpheus in the Underworld, and what do you hope they take away after the curtain falls?
I hope we will offer a joyous, irreverent evening with glittering performances of some of the most magical music ever composed for the operetta stage. Of course, I hope that audiences leave the theatre dancing the CanCan but also that they might wake up the next morning not only singing the tunes but also reflecting on what else is embedded in the piece. Just as Die Fledermaus is essentially the same story as Le Nozze di Figaro, with a slightly different moral emphasis, Tamino with his magic flute and his instruction not to speak to Pamina while they endure life-threatening trials is, of course, another version of the Orpheus myth. The fact is, if the happy endings to which we individually hurtle don’t entirely coincide with fairy tales, it doesn’t make them any the less valid, or fulfilling – or happy!