Orpheus & Eurydice
Opera Australia
Fall into an ecstatic dream…or is it a nightmare?
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Melbourne / Naarm
2 - 5 December 2025
Regent Theare
191 Collins St, Melbourne
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Duration
Approximately 80 minutes, with no interval
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Ticket Price Range
From $79 + $9.80 booking fee
Awe-inspiring acrobatics meet Gluck’s exquisite music in a genre-busting production, a sell-out hit of the 2024 Sydney Festival. Projections seamlessly integrate surtitles into the action on stage, as brilliant singers come together with the trailblazing circus artists of Circa, one of Australia’s most successful cultural exports.
In this visually stunning production, Circa’s Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz has created a mesmerising experience, exploring the intersection between love and death that is the beating heart of Orpheus & Eurydice.
The role of Orpheus demands vocal beauty and dramatic virtuosity, and we’re delighted to bring the world’s best to your stage in extraordinary British countertenor Iestyn Davies. He performs opposite Australian soprano Samantha Clarke, making her role debut singing both Eurydice and Amor under the baton of conductor Dane Lam.
Please note: This production contains infrequent partial nudity and some strobe lighting and flashing lights.
Cast & Creative
Conductor Dane Lam
Director & Set Designer Yaron Lifschitz
Associate Director Heather Fairbairn
Costume Designer Libby McDonnell
Lighting Designer Alexander Berlage
Projection Designer Boris Bagattini
Choreography
Yaron Lifschitz
Bridie Hooper
Circa Ensemble
Orfeo Iestyn Davies
Eurydice/Amore Samantha Clarke
Orchestra Victoria
Opera Australia Chorus
Circa Ensemble
Synopsis
A woman descends into the Underworld.
ACT 1
It is the morning after the night of Orpheus and Eurydice’s wedding. A night of love that ended tragically with the bride’s death. Orpheus wakes to find himself alone in an asylum. He is immersed in his grief and his guilt. His hold on reality is tenuous. The room fills with phantasmal images and creatures. Amor (love) appears. She looks exactly like Eurydice. She may or may not be real. She grants Orpheus the chance to descend into the Underworld to rescue Eurydice. The condition is that he doesn’t look at Eurydice until they return.
ACT 2
Orpheus meets the Furies. Through the beauty of his song he charms them into allowing him to pass. He arrives in Elysium and sings of its wonders. We see Eurydice surrounded by the blessed spirits. Orpheus and Eurydice reunite.
ACT 3
Years have passed in the Hades that is Orpheus’s fractured imagination. Eurydice won’t leave. Orpheus won’t look at her or tell her why. They are stuck in a hell inside heaven. Eurydice pleads and Orpheus relents. He looks at Eurydice, who dies. Orpheus is bereft, realising all is lost. His world further dislocates from reality and Amor and Eurydice return, funerals and weddings meld into a celebration of the triumph of love, which is death.
Trailer