‘Orpheus’ Director Rises to the Occasion

A tap-dancing Mercury runs on stage to announce the arrival of Orpheus’ wife, Eurydice.

“Euro-dyke,” he says brightly.

“You- rid- ah-see!” thunder back the assembled gods.

Well, whose tongue hasn’t tripped up over all those Italian or French or foreign words?

So Mercury, tenor Michael Smith, looks only momentarily nonplussed and soon floats up into the attitude pose made famous in Giovanni da Bologna’s statue--and on FTD delivery trucks.

Meanwhile, comedian Dom DeLuise has been strapping himself into the hulking apparatus in which he will be wheeled in as Public Opinion in Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld,” which opens Wednesday (through July 2) at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Director Peter Mark Schifter has been observing all the details during a rehearsal by the Los Angeles Music Center Opera company at a downtown theater. Afterwards, over assorted dishes of Indian specialties, the 39-year-old director waxes exuberant.

“It’s quite a fantastic visual production,” he says. “It’s filled with fantasy: people flying through the air, houses that transform themselves into other things, dancing flowers and bumblebees.

“The opera opens, in fact, with a ‘pollination’ ballet,” he adds with a warped smile. “Actually, I’d say (the production) is a naughty, bawdy, 19th-Century comedy.”

The mispronunciation of Eurydice’s name is just one joke introduced in the translation by Snoo Wilson.

“But it’s more than just a translation,” Schifter says.

“It’s a real adaptation, as it needs to be. I don’t think that a literal translation of ‘Orpheus’ would reach an audience today. So Snoo has really done a wicked and funny adaptation that satirizes Victorian sexual morality.

“He’s a wonderful writer and a very funny man--very entertaining and weird,” he says with a laugh.

A satire of Victorian morality in 1989?

“I think sexual hypocrisy is a tradition that knows no limits of time and place,” Schifter says. “As long as there is a . . . Jim and Tammy Bakker, and as long as there is a Jimmy Swaggart, then there’s sexual hypocrisy, all kinds of hypocrisy.”

“Orpheus” is a $1.5-million co-production between the English National Opera and the Houston Grand Opera. Schifter was brought in by HGO to represent American interests, he said, to keep it from “becoming too Britty a panto (pantomime) or something.”

But it wasn’t until the production moved to Houston, where Schifter has directed Verdi’s “Falstaff,” Bernstein’s “A Quiet Place” and Mozart’s “Abduction From the Seraglio,” that Schifter really got his hands on it.

“I’ve rewritten the ending. I’ve rewritten the beginning of the show. I’ve rewritten the middle,” he says with a laugh.

“It’s sharper, it’s more American musical comedy. It’s a very different staging than it was in London.

“The major change . . . is the role that Dom DeLuise plays, Public Opinion. I won’t tell you the surprise ending (co-written with Wilson). All I’ll say is that he turns out not to be who you think he was. And it was needed because the character that Dom plays had no payoff at the end of the show at that point. . . .

“Obviously in selecting him for the role--Dom DeLuise portraying the role of the arbiter of morality and good taste--of course means that the audience will be prepared for anything, because when you think of Dom DeLuise, you don’t think of Victorian morality. So it’s a great sham.”

In design, “Orpheus” bears the striking imprint of British illustrator and political cartoonist (“Punch,” “London Times”) Gerald Scarfe. “This production is extremely visually rife, shall we say,” Schifter says with a smile.

“Scarfe has a unique vision and brought his diabolical wit and satanic high to this project.”

Scarfe’s designs have been criticized for overshadowing the singers, however.

“Every scene Gerald designed was extremely filled with business,” Schifter says. “There were thousands of things to look at, and sometimes it was very distracting to the theatrical event. When we did the show in America, we started simplifying it visually, so it would also play.

“There are (still) moments when the scenery takes over, but there are obviously other moments when the theatrical event itself has to take center aisle--I mean the story, the actors, the music.

“We haven’t ignored the musical values. We’ve tried to accompany them with a visual counterpoint. Generally, there is something always going on. This is busier than most (productions), I would say.”

A graduate of Ohio University and the Yale School of Drama (he was thrown out of the Juilliard School of Drama, he says, “for not being able to act very well”), Schifter describes himself “as a sort of innovative traditionalist.”

In addition to Houston Grand Opera, he has worked with Seattle and Long Beach operas and directed on Broadway. This year he was nominated for a Tony Award for the musical “Welcome to the Club.”

“Sometimes I’m very traditional,” he says. “Sometimes I’m wildly innovative. It depends on the needs of the particular piece. So many people come up with wild ideas that never really hook up with the inner, real inner meaning of the work, that aren’t really resonant but just clever.

“I tend to be a little more thoughtful about whether this is illuminating the piece or whether it’s illuminating my career. I like to think it’s illuminating the work.’

“My goal is to never do a production that is tedious or boring,” he says.