Bold, self-assured reimagining of Monteverdi: Opera North's Orpheus reviewed

You wouldn’t like Tamerlano when he’s angry. ‘My heart seethes with rage,’ he sings, in Act III of Handel’s opera – spraying coloratura about the stage like Silly String on a 1980s kids’ TV show. That’s the deal with baroque opera: the emotional register is extreme and you’re either in the moment or you might as well leave the theatre. Literal realism, clearly, is not the point – making it even more necessary for a modern director to sketch in some hint of a social or cultural framework in which we can locate and comprehend these hyper-real characters. The music is too hot and too strong to work as drama in a purely abstract setting. Pare it back too far and you’re left with five maniacs screaming at each other in a black box.

But opera is always a balancing act: an endlessly renegotiated union of multiple arts. The setting – the whole concept – of Opera North’s new Orpheus is strikingly original and brilliantly achieved. We’re in the back garden of a suburban semi in (let’s say) Leeds, where two families are gathering for a wedding. Orpheus and his friends are semi-posh white kids; Eurydice and her relatives are of Indian heritage. They’re all dressed in their finest, and they’re clearly relaxed with each other, exchanging hugs and smiles. A double orchestra is assembled on the patio: a little baroque band, with Laurence Cummings directing from the harpsichord, and alongside them, led by Jasdeep Singh Degun on sitar, the tablas, bansuris and esrajs of the Indian classical tradition. Anna Himali Howard’s direction makes it all look wholly natural; only the weird colours that occasionally flush the West Riding sky suggest that higher powers might be in play.