Vancouver Opera to welcome audiences back to live performances with Orfeo ed Euridice, December 4 and 5

All-star production marks first collaboration with Ne. Sans Opera and the Dance Centre

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Ted Littlemore in Orfeo ed Euridice. Photo by Flick Harrison

Vancouver Opera’s season opener is the timeless love story Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph Willibald Gluck. Marking the opera’s long-awaited return to the live stage, it hits the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on December 4 and 5.

The grand, interdisciplinary production features an all-star cast in VO’s first live performance at the venue since February 2020. Playing Orfeo is Vancouver-raised mezzo-soprano Mireille Lebel, who impressed in last season’s online production of La Voix Humaine. In the soprano role of Euridice is Krisztina Szabó, well-known from Early Music Vancouver concerts and performances with VO and VSO. And Canadian-American soprano Mireille Asselin, a regular at the Metropolitan Opera who’s celebrated for her Baroque singing, plays Amore.

The production is directed and choreographed by Ne. Sans Opera and Dance’s Idan Cohen, and conducted by Leslie Dala, who oversees the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and Vancouver Opera Chorus.

The premiere is an exciting collaboration with Ne. Sans Opera and Dance and The Dance Centre, interweaving choreography, music, and theatre into an innovative contemporary experience. It’s the first time Vancouver Opera has partnered with those groups on a creative process—and it’s the first time a VO production has incorporated contemporary dance to this, fully integrated extent.

The opera dates back to 1762, and follows the ancient Greek myth of Orfeo, in which a divinely gifted musician and poet moves the deities of the Underworld with the beauty of his music and poetry—all in an attempt to lead his love Euridice back to the world of the living.

Tickets are now on sale through the Vancouver Opera box office.