Opera À La Carte San Diego, which made its debut in May 2024 with an intimate East Village production of Puccini’s “La bohème,” will return later this month with an opera that has never been stage in San Diego.
Jacques Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” is a French 1858 operetta that comically satirizes the tragic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Where “La bohème” was performed by Opera À La Carte in its original Italian, “Orpheus” will be performed in an English-language translation with 21 singers and live musical accompaniment.
Opera À La Carte San Diego is the creation of Abla Lynn Hamza, a local soprano and voice teacher who serves as the company’s executive and artistic director. Her goal with the company is to provide performance opportunities for local professional opera singers who have seen their work dwindle as the industry shrinks. She also wants to provide an affordable option for San Diegans who are new to opera and want to discover the art form.
“As a company committed to storytelling and innovation, we’re excited to bring this funky, joyful production to life,” Hamza said.
Zane Alcorn is the director of Opera À La Carte San Diego’s production of “Orpheus in the Underworld.” (Opera À La Carte San Diego)
The intimate style of Opera À La Carte performances was a big attraction for Zane Alcorn, who is directing “Orpheus in the Underworld.” After reading about last year’s “La bohème” production in a news article, he was attracted to the idea of bringing opera singers and audience members closer together.
“When you can hear a performer let out a breath when something disappointing occurs, that means so much more to an audience member when you’re 10 feet from them rather than 20 feet,” Alcorn said.
Alcorn graduated from Scripps Ranch High School and earned a theater degree from San Diego State University. Since 2021, he has focused on directing theater and opera productions around the country. This has included directing Jonathan Dunn’s “Adventures of Pinocchio” with Boulder Opera Company and Cincinnati Opera’s “Opera Chorus Cabaret.” Next year, he’ll director Delaware Valley Opera Company’s “The Gift of the Magi.”
Composer Jacques Offenbach is most famous for his final opera, “The Tales of Hoffman,” which premiered in 1881, just four months after he died from heart failure at age 61.
By contrast, “Orpheus in the Underworld” was Offenbach’s first full-length opera, and its famous “galop infernal” can-can music has become one of the most recognizable short orchestra pieces in operatic history.
Offenbach’s opera was inspired by the ancient story of Orpheus and Eurydice. Heartbroken over the death of his beloved wife, Eurydice, the musician Orpheus descends into the underworld to bring her back. After charming Hades with his music, he is granted permission to return Eurydice to the land of the living with the agreement that she must follow him out and he’s forbidden to look back at her. But when Orpheus loses faith and turns back to make sure she’s still following him, she is lost forever.
In “Orpheus in the Underworld,” with score by Offenbach and libretto by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy, Orpheus and Eurydice are no longer in love and the Greek gods are fixated on romance, pranks and partying.
“It’s a really amazing representation of what French theater and opera was like in that time period and making fun of the French aristocrats,” Alcorn said. “The original libretto really reflects that. It’s a lot more criticism of the gods and how they’re interacting with mortals.”
Alcorn said the reason the opera is rarely performed nowadays is because the libretto is “a little spacey.”
“A lot of plot lines get thrown around and almost melodramatic soap opera moments occur,” he said. “A lot of adaptations of this work are terrible. The dialogue gets pretty rough. It’s supposed to be high satire but there’s a lot of unfunny parts that have been translated over this show’s history.”
To make the opera more easily digestible for modern audiences, Alcorn has worked extensively with various versions of the libretto. He has trimmed the story down to under two hours and clarified the language and stories.
To bring contemporary context to the story, Alcorn is setting the opera in 1970s America.
During that decade, women were coming into their own in the workplace and at home, which suits the idea of Eurydice deciding for herself how she wants to live and who she wants to love. Another reason he chose the ’70s was because it was a time of conflict between the younger generation wanting free expression and older Americans becoming more conservative.
“For me, the 1970s is one of those fun periods of time with a lot of dramatic color and music and also this huge counter-culture flower power movement came into its own. Coupled with the deep conservatism that was coming from the Vietnam War and the resulting conflict in the Middle East that emerged in that time. You have these two really intense perceptions of life. We’re making such amazing social progress, and people are trying to send us back 200 to 300 years ago.”
Tenor Adam Caughey will play Orpheus in Opera À La Carte San Diego’s “Orpheus in the Underworld.” (Adam Caughey)
The production will feature a cast of 21 local singers, many of them members of the San Diego Opera Chorus. Soprano Katherine Polit stars as Eurydice, tenor Adam Caughey will play Orpheus, tenor Frank Napolitano plays Pluto, baritone Michael O’Halloran plays Jupiter and mezzo-soprano Sarah Nicole Carter will play Public Opinion.
Bruce Stasyna, San Diego Opera’s resident conductor and chorusmaster, is serving as music director and conductor for “Orpheus.” The show’s musical accompaniment will be a piano and violin. There will also be three to four dancers from Wen Song’s Song in Motion company, performing to choreography by Cassidy Crolley.
Soprano Katherine Polit will play Eurydice in Opera À La Carte San Diego’s “Orpheus in the Underworld.” (Katherine Polit)
Alcorn said “Orpheus” will be staged in a church event hall where the audience will be seated on three sides of the performance space.
“The biggest thing to know is that because we’ll be so close together, you’ll get to see nuances that I don’t know have been explored before,” Alcorn said. “You’ll be able to understand and feel this conflicted marriage between the two of them. They may not really love each other in romantic way, but there’s still something there. There’s a reason why they connected. Finding those moments of balance I think are going to be really wonderful for the audience to see up close.”
Opera À La Carte presents ‘Orpheus in the Underworld’
When: Final dress rehearsal at 7 p.m. Sept. 24; regular performances, 7 p.m. Sept. 26; 6:30 p.m. Sept. 28
Where: St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Parish Hall, 1 Parish Lane, Del Mar
Tickets: $15 for final dress rehearsal; $45 for regular performances
Online: ticketleap.events/events/operaalacartesandiego