Last Updated on June 15, 2026
The Devil Has The Best Tunes
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
You might think that Orfeo’s visit to the underworld was a bad trip, but the appearance of sinkholes next to a Purley railway bridge made yesterday’s journey to Glyndebourne from London similarly hellish, with train cancellations and quite a few ticketholders having to cancel. However, the transport-induced shenanigans didn’t take away from the creativity and visual invention of South African artist and Olivier Award-winning director William Kentridge’s production of Monteverdi’s 1607 masterpiece L’Orfeo.
Glyndebourne is going through a process of building relationships with visual artists, encouraging them to bring opera into their creative practice. This production is a product of that process and marks both Kentridge’s Glyndebourne debut and the house’s first Monteverdi production, making it the festival’s most anticipated premiere of the 2026 season. L’Orfeo is a critical work in the development of opera. Jacopo Peri wrote the earliest examples of the form, but Monteverdi’s 1607 work, first performed at Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga’s court at Mantua, created the template for Baroque opera.
The ancient Greek Orpheus legend still has a powerful hold on our musical culture. The story of the foolish young troubadour who descends into Hades to retrieve his deceased wife Euridice often turns up at moments of cultural innovation; from Monteverdi to the Offenbach operetta Orphée aux Enfers that established the genre, and in more modern times, the box-office-busting Broadway smash Hadestown.
Kentridge is no stranger to opera production, and this is a return to Monteverdi for him, having directed the composer’s 1640 Il Ritorno d’Ulisse using puppets, in a much more radical take on the work than the new Garsington production that opened last week. For L’Orfeo, he has taken his inspiration from the poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, written in 1922, the text of which is projected in a typical Kentridgian sans-serif font.
In Rilke’s work, Euridice is at one with her death, subsumed into the transformative process of existence and barely acknowledging Orpheus. This conception of the body and spirit as a palimpsest has a deep connection with the director’s art practice in which drawings are created, filmed, then erased and recreated, creating an endless cycle of change.
Kentridge has set his production twelve years earlier than Rilke in 1910, and it is possibly no coincidence that it aligns with the year in which the Union of South Africa was created. The opera’s setting is located in an artist’s studio overlaid with multiple projections and animations that speed up with the music. It’s a synthesis of a Bauhaus artist’s studio and Kentridge’s own, with items shipped from South Africa. There are images of Bauhaus-style pendant lights, megaphones, and telephones, with the period seeing the birth of mass-communication culture.
The singers carry corrugated cardboard Kandinsky-esque cutouts in earth tones. The animations and films showcase notebooks full of charcoal drawings of township landscapes, symbols and jottings. We see the director’s signature charcoal trees and flowers, with the tree’s transformation into a root representing Euridice’s journey. There are marked-up maps, another Kentridge trope and even a photo of Rilke. In a sense, Kentridge has created an installation that addresses his creative process with an opera folded into it.
Central to the opera is the character of La Musica, the spirit of music, beautifully sung by Italian Baroque specialist Francesca Aspromonte, who also covers the underwritten part of Euridice. With her strong, clear soprano, Aspromonte sets out her stall in the opening air ‘Dal mio Permesso amato.’ Kentridge has transformed La Musica into a representative of all arts; we are in her studio, and instead of a lyre, she has a sketch book out of which the whole scenography of the opera emerges, integrating the world of the classical myth with Kentridge’s practice.
Dancer Roseline Wilkens also represents Euridice through movement. The choreography was attractive, if lacking in stylistic coherence, but it didn’t seem to add much to understanding of the character.
Polish tenor Krystian Adam, dapper in a boater, loose-fitting golden-brown jacket and cravat, brings a sense of passionate lyricism to his Orfeo with a moving ‘Possento Spirito’ but needed a little more arrogance in his characterisation to justify his turning against Pluto’s orders.
Up-and-coming Australian mezzo-soprano Xenia Puskarz Thomas was excellent as La Speranza / Messaggera. Her ‘Ecco l’atra palude’ combined a powerful sense of foreboding with a touching sensitivity. Her line ‘Lasciate ogni speranza, o voi ch’entrate’ (Abandon all hope, ye who enter here) might well have been aimed at the Southern Rail customers. British bass Callum Thorpe brought a sense of empathy to the role of the boatman Caronte whilst American mezzo Leia Lensing made a sweet-toned Proserpina, Queen of the Underworld. You could see why sombre-toned Davide Giangregorio as Plutone, god of the underworld, found it hard to object to her entreaties on behalf of Orfeo.
From the strident opening brass Toccata, Jonathan Cohen coaxed a wonderful array of colours out of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In particular, the viols and organ created moments of great sublimity and the whole ensemble created a sparkling account of Monteverdi’s progressive polyphony.
Kentridge has created a densely populated, multi-layered and intriguing take on L’Orfeo. It could be argued that the characters have again become his puppets, immersed in a dialogue with the artist’s personal practice. Sometimes it is overwhelming, sometimes immensely moving. The production certainly operates in the realms of a Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk and makes us out of the past address the operatic future.
On a more prosaic note, because of the transport problems we didn’t manage the usual dash to Waitrose to pick up picnic essentials and so ordered a last-minute Glyndebourne picnic on arrival. I’m happy to report that we were given a prime spot just in front of the Rose Garden and that the picnic was well-constructed and plentiful. I do like the self-made picnic ritual, but if you can’t be bothered or don’t have time and don’t want the formality of the restaurants, then it is a good option.
Playing between 14 June and 25 July
Glyndebourne
Lewes,
East Sussex,
BN8 5UU
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