Music by Jacques Offenbach
Libretto by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy
Orpheus in the Underworld
Paul Wingfield conductor
Rebecca Meltzer director
Thursday 5 - Saturday 7 March 2026
Gas Street Central
Birmingham City University
Foreword
A very warm welcome to Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s Spring Opera, Orpheus in the Underworld. Following three exceptional years of operamaking I am pleased to write that The Linbury Trust have agreed to fund our staged productions for a further three years. The support of those who are passionate about opera has never been more vital as the outlook for the arts becomes increasingly challenging, particularly in Birmingham. To this end, we are also enormously grateful for the support of the Eric Sykes Opera Scholarship which, this year, supports one of our student repetiteurs, Razmik Melkonian.
As a result of the support above, you will, tonight, witness the result of a truly collaborative opera-making project. For the first time this year we are working with the students of Birmingham Ormiston Academy. As we do so, we connect the talent ‘pipeline’ across the city, introducing pre-university students to the impressive, intricate and sometimes messy machinery of opera. They join a vast team of singers, instrumentalists, costume, video
and set designers who have come together across BCU to create an extraordinary evening in an extraordinary venue.
You will be pleased to hear that the same pipeline is now well connected beyond RBC and into the industry with students making recent debuts at the Wiener Staatsoper, Garsington Opera, Opera North, British Youth Opera and in the West End. We are, naturally, enormously proud of all that the students continue to achieve.
Orpheus in the Underworld is surely one of Offenbach’s most irreverent operas. It takes a sniper’s approach to the Parisian elite, casting them as the Gods of Olympus and lampooning them for their hypocrisy and immorality. It does not take too great a leap of the imagination to map this cut-throat satire onto our own turbulent times.
I hope very much that you enjoy the first steps of a new generation of talent this evening.
Paul Wingfield Head of Vocal & Operatic Studies Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Synopsis
Act 1
Orpheus, a famous musician, is unhappily married to Eurydice, who has grown tired of his constant fiddling. Both partners now long to escape the marriage.
Eurydice has taken a fancy to a travelling honey merchant, Aristaeus, who is secretly Pluto, ruler of the underworld. In order to claim Eurydice as his own, Pluto devises a plan with Orpheus’s support to have her killed off.
He places a snake in her ‘cornfield’, which duly bites her. To her great delight, she dies and is transported to Hell.
Act 2
In Pluto’s realm, Eurydice is being kept under the watch of jailer John Styx, who nostalgically recalls his supposed former glory as a king. Upon arrival, Jupiter, curious and intent on seduction, disguises himself to gain access to her room.
Eurydice is delighted and amused by Jupiter’s ingenuity and agrees to run away with him. Meanwhile, the other gods enjoy their new-found freedom away from Olympus. Orpheus,
Orpheus is equally pleased at the news of his wife’s demise. However, Public Opinion reminds him that such an attitude is unacceptable, and should he want to uphold his reputation, he must get his wife back.
Meanwhile, on Mount Olympus, Jupiter and the other gods are bored and quarrelsome. Accompanied by Public Opinion, Orpheus duly visits Olympus to ask for Jupiter’s help. Hearing of Pluto’s escapade in abducting Eurydice, the Gods seize the opportunity to escape their monotony and descend to the Underworld.
coerced by Public Opinion, finally appears to reclaim Eurydice.
Jupiter decrees that Orpheus may lead her back to Earth on the condition that he not look at her along the way. To ensure that Orpheus fails, Jupiter hurls a thunderbolt in his direction causing him to glance back. Jupiter then agrees to transform Eurydice into a Bacchante. Tired of being objectified, she rejects the attention of each of her admirers in favour of a life of independence and pleasure.
Biographies
Rebecca Meltzer is an Opera Director, Movement Director and Choreographer from London. She has worked with companies across the UK and internationally including the Royal Ballet and Opera, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, Garsington Opera, Opera Holland Park, Wexford Festival Opera, Spoleto Festival and New Zealand Opera. Notable credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rodelinda (Garsington Opera/BBC Proms), The Rape of Lucretia (English Touring Opera), Andrea Chénier (Theatre St Galen), Opera Shorts (Buxton
British conductor, Paul Wingfield took up the post as Head of Vocal & Operatic Studies at RBC in September 2017, having previously worked in the department as a Visiting Lecturer. He has worked as a conductor and assistant conductor at the Royal Ballet &
International Festival), Opera Highlights (Scottish Opera) Semele, The Turn of the Screw, Svadba and Mansfield Park (Waterperry Opera Festival/New Zealand Opera/Opera Holland Park).
Rebecca is developing a new opera for the Royal Opera Youth Company and directs Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas for English Touring Opera in the Autumn. She is also the Co-Director of the Waterperry Opera Festival Young Artist Programme, a festival she co-founded in 2018. Alongside her theatre work, Rebecca is an avid landscape painter, recently exhibiting work with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.
Opera (RBO), where he was a Jette Parker Young Artist from 2012 to 2014 and mentored by Sir Antonio Pappano. He has worked for many of the UK’s leading companies including RBO, Garsington Opera, Birmingham Opera Company, Welsh National Opera, Opera North and Opera Holland Park. He has also worked as music staff for English National Opera. At the Royal Ballet & Opera, he
conducted Mozart and Salieri (Rimsky-Korsakov) and El gato con botas (Montsalvatge) in the Linbury Studio Theatre. He also conducted the orchestras of the RBO and Welsh National Opera in critically-acclaimed main stage performances including Die Zauberflöte and La favorite. Recent work includes Le nozze di Figaro and Eugene Onegin (Garsington Opera), Turn of the Screw (Bury Court Opera) –‘Paul Wingfield drawing almost tactile instrumental sonorities from the Chroma Ensemble, is faultless’ and Le roi d’Ys (Chelsea Opera Group) described by the Guardian as ‘thrilling...
Jennifer Gregory is a Londonbased designer originally from the Peak District. Since graduating from Wimbledon College of Art with a first class degree in Costume Design and being awarded The Ann Holloway Prize for design she has worked as both designer and
characterised by furious energy and commitment’. He made his debut with the Philharmonia in 2021. Paul also joined music staff at RBO on numerous productions including Carmen, Gloriana, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Walküre, The Minotaur, La bohème, Tosca, Don Carlo, La rondine, Capriccio, Parsifal, Don Giovanni, Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Manon Lescaut.
Paul read Music at Oxford University, and trained as a conductor and repetiteur at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the National Opera Studio.
design associate on a range of productions from plays, to West End and Broadway musicals and opera. Upcoming shows are The Rape of Lucretia for HGO Opera this Spring and La bohème for Waterperry Opera Festival this summer.
Cast
Character
Aristée/Pluton
Jupiter
Eurydice
Orphée
L’Opinion Publique
John Styx
Cupidon
Vénus
Diane Minerve
Mercury
Junon
Mars
Ensemble
Thursday, Saturday afternoon
Thomas Hawkey-Soar
Gianpiero Greatorex
Hannah Devereux
Ethan Jacobs
Mairi McGillivray
Sam Weakley
Xingtian Ge
Abigail Baylis
Matilda Wale
Sophie Henderson
Sebastian Sgouraditis
Charlotte Turner
Joshua Thompson
Friday, Saturday evening
Andrew WoodmassCalvert
William Swinnerton
Phoebe Curcher
Joe Yates
Jade McLellan
Oscar Curtis
Millie Royle
Laura Csiki
Matilda Wale
Sydney Suffield
Sebastian Sgouraditis
Bella Bartels
Joshua Thompson
Anna Chechotkina, Oscar Curtis, Georgi Davies, Beatrice Heasman, Lydia Lythgoe, Noor Bhatia, Sam Weakley, Shenuk Wijesinghe, Xinran Yan, Zeyu Zhou
Orchestra
Flute
Matilda Fox
Flute/Piccolo
Sophie Wood
Oboe
Mary Glasby
Clarinet
Annabel Chadwick
Daniel Black
Bassoon
Shoshana Yugin-Power
Horn
Hannah Spry
Darcie Vernon
Barnabas O’Neill
Trumpet
Monty Clark
Jak Hulse
Trombone
Nathan Tempest
Timpani
Nathan Burt
Percussion
Junyan Gao
Violin
Shuwei Zuo
Sin-Yu Wang
Viola
Yurii Biletskyi
Cello
Simin Zheng
Bass
Hongming Zhang
With thanks to
The Linbury Trust
Jerry Sykes
Gas Street Church Birmingham
BOA Creative, Digital and Performing Arts Academy
Jacqui Findlay
Production Credits
Director Rebecca Meltzer
Conductor Paul Wingfield
Set/Costume Designer Jennifer Gregory
Assistant Director Emma Kennedy
Assistant Conductor Razmig Melkonian
Repetiteurs Yizhe Lin, Yingzheng Shang
Musical Preparation Fraser Goulding
French Coaching Hervé Goffings
Dialogue Jeremy Sams
Dialogue Coach Louise Crane
Production Manager Ruth Morgan
Lighting Designer Jo Dawson
Costume Supervisor Leanne Fitchett
Video Design Meera Darj, Sasha Owen (lead), Irene Philip, Emily Rushmer
Company Stage Manager Tracy Croft
Deputy Stage Manager Beanie Terrington Burgoyne
Assistant Stage Managers Heidi Ashford, Megan Cleaver, Jessica Johnson, Abigail Neil, Maddie Taylor
Set James Elkington, Val Grant
Props Heidi Ashford, Megan Cleaver
Costume Daisy Aston, Eden Dowling, Rosanna Hall, Natalie Law, Charlotte Winspeare
Hair and Makeup Ridley Akhter, Madi Kilbride
Technical Support Going Dark Theatrical Services
Equipment Hire Production Resource Group (PRG)
Surtitle Operators Lily Rugg, Jamilah Dogar-Hurd
