Word: orpheus
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...occasion from the Dallas Opera, billed his "Nineteenth Century Affair" as an attempt to capture the "gaiety and spirit of the romantic era." Nowhere did it succeed more effervescently than in the centerpiece of the week-long festival: a polished, witty production of Jacques Offenbach's 1858 operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld...
Fine Froth. Offenbach, a dapper dynamo with a prolific melodic gift and a boffo theatrical sense, made the French comic opera of his time into the granddaddy of today's musical comedy. In Orpheus, his first big success, he took what were then scandalous liberties with the Greek legend in order to parody Gluck's opera Orfeo et Euridice, to spoof solemn antiquity worship, and to satirize the manners and morals of the Second Empire under Napoleon III. His fiddle-playing Orpheus is glad to be rid of the unfaithful Eurydice until a character called Public Opinion forces...
...Kansas City production, deftly directed by Ellis Rabb and churned to a fine froth by Conductor Nicola Rescigno, skipped along with the sauce and savoir-faire of a boulevardier on the Champs Elysées. Effective as the singing was-notably Frank Porretta's mugging Orpheus, Jack Bittner's crafty Jupiter and Jeanette Scovotti's vapid Eurydice-it was almost overshadowed by Zachary Solov's spirited, stylish choreography, brilliantly danced by New York City Ballet Stars Melissa Hayden and Jacques D'Amboise. With the help of Jack G. O'Brien's updated English...
Final proof that the show was an authentic triumph was in the enthusiastic applause of French Theater Manager Jean Robin. He went away convinced that Kansas City's Orpheus should be exported to Paris...
...going to get the chop. I pray to God it isn't me." And there he was at 8 o'clock next morning, clambering into Bluebird's cockpit, clutching his lucky Teddy bear, Mr. Whoppit. Then he revved up Bluebird's 4,520-lb.-thrust Orpheus jet engine and shrieked off across the lake...