Every culture, in its oldest stories, sends someone into the dark for love. The Greeks had Orpheus and his lyre; the Egyptians had Isis; the Sanskrit tradition gave us Savitri, who followed the god of death himself.
Opera Siam begins in that shared human hunger with the Thailand premiere of Gluck's Orfeo Ed Euridice, reimagined through Thai Buddhist cosmology. It will be staged in the Great Hall of King's College International School Bangkok, Ratchadaphisek Road, on Saturday at 2pm and 7pm (gala) and Sunday at 5pm.
The underworld where Orfeo enters is not a shadowy Greek cavern but the hell realms of Thai Buddhist cosmology -- blazing, vivid, almost hallucinatory, the same realms that gaze down from a thousand temple murals. Over this unmistakably Thai landscape, Gluck pours his great 18th-century score, music so pure in its grief it sounds written for exactly this crossing.
Orfeo loses Euridice, the person he loves most, and refuses to accept it. He descends into the land of the dead to bring her back, armed with nothing but his voice. First performed in Vienna in 1762, the opera asks a question that needs no musical training to feel -- how far would you go for someone you cannot imagine living without?
The concept, developed by director Somtow Sucharitkul, hinges on a layering. The Greek myth stays intact, but alongside it Somtow places the visual and philosophical world of Thai Buddhism.
The look is drawn from Thai sacred art -- the all-consuming white hell of Chalermchai Kositpipat's White Temple in Chiang Rai; Elysian Fields inspired by the cobalt Blue Temple; and Orfeo's return visualised through the Naga imagery of northern temple architecture. The most haunting image may be the dozens of disembodied white hands rising from the stage, repurposed for both hell and heaven.
Beneath the spectacle lies a quiet philosophical bridge between two faiths -- a sense of redemption, and that we hold some power even over death itself.
Conductor Trisdee Na Patalung sees his job as simply serving a score pure in its grief. All three principals come from Opera Siam's Young Soloist Program -- mezzo-soprano Kridhima Siriwattanakamol in the title role; soprano Chanya Maneewan as Euridice; and 14-year-old prodigy Punnika Mahuemuang as Amore.
Tickets cost 500, 900 and 2,000 baht. Visit ticketmelon.com.
