Above: Hei-Kyung Hong as Euridice and Jamie Barton as Orfeo; a Met Opera photo
~ Author: Oberon
Sunday October 20th, 2019 matinee – Not being a fan of Mark Morris, nor of Jamie Barton, I nevertheless went to The Met this afternoon to experience Gluck’s ORFEO ED EURIDICE live because Hei-Kyung Hong was singing Euridice. I saw this production when it was new, and hated almost everything about it; so today, all I needed was a score desk to hear Ms. Hong.
It was nice to see a substantial audience for this Sunday matinee, which for some reason started 15 minutes late. The opera is given as a single act, lasting about 90 minutes. The story unfolds almost too quickly until the interminable never-ending ending.
The Met is probably too big of a place to best experience this music. Orchestra and chorus fared well under Mark Wigglesworth’s baton, though there were times when the noise of the dancing intruded.
From the Met’s Young Artist program, soprano Hera Hyesung Park was a pretty-voiced, incisive Amor. In the large space, Jamie Barton’s voice was wonderfully present in the music of Orfeo; she uses chest voice constantly when venturing below F whilst the upper notes sound a bit tense. Her singing was impressive in its way, but she never moved me.
Hei-Kyung Hong’s touchingly clear, expressive singing had an insistently plaintive quality that finally induces her husband to look at her, causing her second death. I’ve never heard Euridice’s “you-don’t-love-me-anymore” guilt trip so persuasively laid on. Hei-Kyung’s curtain call was lovely: she came out in her white gown and was greeted by a barrage of bouquets sailing over the footlights.
I have many fond memories of Hei-Kyung, going back to her days singing Woglinde and Servilia, and then becoming a peerless Mimi and Liu. One of my favorite conversations with her, while I was working at Tower, came on the day James Levine had asked her to sing Eva in DIE MEISTERSINGER. She was a bit panicked by the offer, and wanted a recording to listen to before she committed. I handed her Helen Donath’s, and told her not to worry. She had a beautiful success in the role.
Today, realizing that over all the many times I have seen her onstage and met her face-to-face, I’d never asked Hei-Kyung for her autograph. I waited for her for over an hour at the stage door. Finally, she came out with family and friends and gave me a kiss, and her signature.
~ Oberon
Oberon's Glade 