The stage curtain, with its skull like a Hell’s Angels icon, is raised. We’re straight into a seedy Paris night club, scantily -clad dancers on stage, men in dinner suits, holding champagne glasses, leering. Pluto (David Sitka), in a full-length scarlet-red coat, black satin braid, over black PVC leather pants and boots, is master of ceremonies. What a dance sequence! Vienna State Ballet dancers ,(choreography Roswitha Stadlmann), stunningly erotic. Sitka’s Pluto isn’t really ‘evil’: rather maliciously mischievous: attractive with an irresistible magnetism. Everyone gets to come here, he sings; marriages are made in heaven, but we break them. The fabled Euridice will require the Devil’s help . ‘How do I look?’ He preens himself in his cream leather jacket. Strains of the Can Can in the background. Volksoper Orchestra conducted by Guido Mancusi justifying Offenbach’s richly melodic, and endlessly inventive score. It’s hell and they’re dancing the can can. (Get me there!)
Switch to the lobby of an appartment house. Pretty, petite Julia Koci (as Euridice) sings of ‘we women who have a man and a house, sit around waiting all-day-long.’ And what do they do? Spend time with their neighbour. (Her neighbour is ‘Aristeus’, Pluto no less.) Koci is just gorgeous, in a cute, tight, deck-striped sleeveless dress. Here I sit in Paradise?
Offenbach and librettists Crémieux and Halévy) have turned the classical tale on its head. Orpheus (Thomas Sigwald) her husband, a music teacher, is having it off with one of his students, whom he hurriedly kisses. Sigwald , wearing a boring grey suit, is a creep: cheating on Eurydice. What mother would let him teach their daughter after a divorce? She (Koci) goads him; she’s married to a third rate music teacher. So, to get even, he threatens to torture her with his music! This Orpheus is anything but the idealised legend. He’s so forceful, the bully, he jostles her. (Actually the ‘innocent’ Eurydice is having her kicks with her ‘neighbour’.)
He’ll torture her with his music! His strident violinist (Una Stanic), is rather good- a pretty brunette , wearing a tight, gold mini skirt. Eurydice’s rat of a husband stands over her threatening with his belt. The poor woman is forced to her knees. But Koci is a sensational soprano, and she protests with runs of coloratura. Orpheus wants to kill her! And in waiting, Sitka’s Pluto appears and struts his stuff. She, uninhibited, does a twirl . They smooch. I am Aristeus, your shepherd, he sings, where is my little lamb? Sitka is an impressive tenor, and very persuasive. Already, he’s sitting on her: he’ll teach her new tricks! (‘Once desire takes hold, there’s no going back.’) Then Pluto/Aristeus offers her a joint (or is it hash pipe?) Only the dead know what living is for! She’s floating. Remember, her father was a god, she remonstrates. We’re all gods, he counters. What’s in that potion he’s given her. This Pluto, like a 1960’s death cult hippy, is getting her high.
Then a puff of smoke, and we’re back to suburbia. Orpheus wants to set their break-up to music- Offenbach’s dig at the banality of the music business. (Offenbach’s satire is full of ‘contemporary’ references, so director Helmut Bauman’s slips in ‘Wikipedia’.) There’s a character called ‘Public Opinion’, sung by Regula Rosin, in a masculine-shouldered striped suit. Offenbach’s embodiment of conventional morality, those sententious bourgeois spewing cant and hypocrisy. ‘Follow me, I will give you immortality’, she promises.

OLYMP, says the sign in the lift. Mount Olympia looks like a health farm, inmates ‘ wearing white towelling-gowns, everything high-tech, clean and sanitised.’What a pleasure to lie down and sleep’, (that’s their only pleasure.) As Venus (Annely Peebo) sings, ‘it’s her job to see that two people share a bed.’ But here even love falls asleep. Cupid – Jakob Semotam, dressed like an overweight cherub- creates ‘love’s longing’. The bad news is, no one knows us down there anymore! It’s brilliantly witty. Diana (Birgid Steinberger), she once a godess of many sagas, is now only a myth. Cupid protests, the’ve been there for 2000 years, and wants a generation change.
Jupiter (Martin Winkler), terrific bass, here outstanding comic actor, a self-parody, stifles all opposition, and sends everyone to their rooms. Jupiter, of course, is forever having sexual affairs- taking on disguises. His wife, the jealous Juno, is played (in drag) by Christian Graff, dry,camp, a gem of a role. He commissions Mercury (Boris Eder) to use his mafia contacts in the underworld to find Euridice.
Pluto arrives with a six-pack of champagne (Moet-Chandon): What a pleasure to breathe the sweet air of Olympus: his place smells of nothing but Lust. He’s accompanied by fierce ,black-feathered birds of prey, with ghostly white faces. Winkler’s Jupiter looks like some pensioned-off Roman general. ‘I am a legend’, he boasts. He fobbs off a scandal as just a newspaper slander; this is a ‘family concern’, ‘no carpets to sweep under’. Democracy! Cupid leads a rebellion , and Jupiter’s exposed as a sexual predator. (Juno insists he re-open the ‘Eurydice Abduction’ case.)
Orpheus arrives, Sigwald in his raincoat -freezing- and complains of having lost her, Euridice, -All is lost- his fake sentiment to the strains of Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice. So Jupiter travels to the underworld -accompanied by his entire court!

The joke is that the Olypian gods -let loose in the Underworld- freed from the constraints of high-minded morality- have a hell of a time. And, ironically, Euridice, lured there for kicks, neglected by Pluto, is bored stiff. Euridice is in her boudoir, Koci in a black-lace bodice, using her hair-dryer, even under her arms. If this is what hell is like, she’d rather stay with her husband. My life is boring: where is Satan? Koci’s soprano is the high-point of the evening. She’s fumbling in her make-up bag, her legs covered in red-boa feathers; or some acrylic fur. Now she has to listen to Styx’s sad life story, his drink problem.
Jupiter and Cupid have arrived in Pluto’s Underworld. ‘Have you seen the prices at the bar? Jupiter peels-off some notes. Winkler’s face gloats with glee, eyeing the talent. A couple are copulating front of stage. (You can’t expect Public Opinion to respect privacy?) So ‘Public Opinion’ (Rosin) exits, literally carrying off Pluto , while Sigwald’s Orpheus is lured into a circle of dancing bodies, emerging with his pants down.
Juno visits Euridice in her ‘boudoir’- with hints of a lesbian interest. Followed by Jupiter, in an outrageous scene, transformed as a fly, more like a wasp. Jupiter, true to form, disguised for seduction. Her prods her with his tentacles- unbelievably Winkler is seen arousing himself- and ultimately couples with her.
In the classical story, Jupiter orders Euridice out of the Underworld; but will lose her if she turns around. So Jupiter now arranges a thunderbolt. Baccus -Evole! Orpheus, he’s mortal, but feels divine. Euridice proclaims to Baccus, if I’m to die, I’ll gladly have a bottle of wine in exchange.

FOLLOW THE ORCHESTRA: NO ONE CAN MISS THE CAN-CAN! The most spectacular can-can sequence this side of Paris is observed by Pluto and a gallery of revellers. Jupiter got her! 4000 years of his supremacy is over! And you claimed not to have kidnapped her! reproaches Juno. (She decides Euridice will become a follower of Baccus.)
The girl dancers, platinum blondes, wearing champagne-coloured bodices, their male partners, bare torsoes, leather harnesses.
Musically, under Guido Mancusi, Volkoper Orchestra and Chorus had verve and swing. Baumann directed a star cast, the furious comic timing , like clockwork, never faltered. This exemplary production, revived after seven years for Offenbach’s 200th, attests to Offenbach’s genius, the first ‘Grand Master’ of operetta. © PR 16.09.2019
Photos: Thomas Sigwald and Vienna State Ballet; Julia Koci (Eurydice); Christian Graff (Juno), Annely Peebo (Venus), Birgid Steinberger(Diana); Julia Koci (Eurydice); David Sitka (Pluto) and Ballet; Featured Image Vincent Schirrmacher (Pluto) and ensemble
© Barbara Pálffy and Dimo Dimov/ Volksoper Wien