Tony is a superstar singer. He is married to Sarah, who is also a singer. They work together and tour the world, but their marriage is in crisis.
We meet them at a recording session where they are booked together to sing the parts of Orfeo and Euridice in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. La Musica, the sound engineer, is running the session. But Tony is wobbly – he self-medicates to keep his anxiety at bay, he is unfaithful to his wife to feel desired, and he is terrified of being overshadowed by Sarah. As the session progresses, he finds it harder to distinguish his ‘trip’ from reality, finding himself in his own personal underworld, where he has to face his insecurities and save his marriage.
We believe that the archetype of the male hero is in crisis. Gone are the days where we can tell the story of a man singing about how much he loves his wife without ever hearing from the woman herself; where we can follow the hero’s journey without understanding the person he is trying to save. In Monteverdi’s opera, Euridice has 4 lines in total. Where is she in this opera? In our recording studio we invite our audience to ask the question: who gets to have a voice?
Director: Franciska Éry
Set and costume design: Peter Butler
Lighting design: Mathieu Cabanes
We’re artists from Hungary, France and the UK, interested in spatial relations and an interdisciplinary approach to opera.
Hungarian director Franciska Éry puts cultural belonging and the audience experience in the forefront of her work. Past projects have received the OffWestend Award for Best Opera Production, Highlights of Hungary, and nominated for the FEDORA prize.
Peter Butler is a visual artist specialising in set and costume design. Credits include Shut Up I’m Dreaming (National Theatre London), A Taste Of Honey (Royal Exchange Manchester), The Shape of Things (Park 200). He won the Linbury Prize for Stage Design and nominated for the Stage Debut Award.
Mathieu Cabanes is a French lighting designer. Credits include La Belle au Bois Dormant (Opéra National de Lyon), Don Pasquale, Le Climat, Séisme (Opéra National de Montpellier), and several productions by Bob Wilson. He works with Concept K, Lab212, Maison Hermès, MISK Art Institute, Saudi Arabia and the Times Art Museum, China.
Photos (c) Susanne Hassler-Smith
