
Look, there's not much I CAN'T find a flaw in but this might be one of those rare times when I'm struck dumb. What Pina Bausch did with Gluck's Overture to "Orpheus & Eurydice" is possibly the best thing I've ever seen choreographed to opera and maybe one of the best morbid performance pieces ever...and I like morbid. And opera. Especially chorale pieces and those are always morbid, I mean choruses sing on that fine line between good and evil. Even Handel's "Messiah" could be the theme from heaven OR hell, it's a coin toss. Have you ever listened to Mozarts Requiem? Well...it IS a funeral mass, so it is morbid in a sense yet all they are talking about is GOD and still one feels they are being sent straight to hell. "Consigned to flames of wall".... Bausch's lines are very Martha Graham in this piece and perhaps she meant it that way. They BEGIN Graham but end Bausch - askew and random, almost like afterthoughts. I found Pina Bausch to be unusual in a German art house kinda way when I first found Cafe Mueller, but I see such subtlety and understatement here that I have to wonder if she may have been a musician. Her choreography just seems so beautifully woven into the orchestra and opera, breathing within the fabric of it no less! I've watched some real crap on YouTube of "performance artists" trying to do some contemporary bullshit to "Salome" and of course "O Mio Babbino Caro" from Gianni Schicchi is a big draw for the juxtaposition-driven and it's flop after <b>...</b>
Pina
Bausch
Orpheus&
Eurydice
2009
Gluck
opera
Overature