Trisha Brown's L'Orfeo: Postmodern Meets Baroque

Abstract

American choreographer Trisha Brown's first directorial venture into the world of opera in 1998 was a memorable success. The artistic director of the Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie in Brussels, Bernard Foccroulle, was quite daring when he asked the abstract choreographer to direct Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, but his gamble paid off: over the last ten years, Brown's production has been widely toured, repeatedly revived, and is now available on DVD.1 Commentators have often noted its great success but they also have underlined its enigmatic quality. Noted designer Roland Aeschlimann certainly contributed to the staging's hypnotic effect on audiences by imagining the minimalist, bleached world in which the action takes place. Ultimately, though, the defining feature of the production was the striking movement—halfway between dance and theater—that Brown devised for the performers. A study of a page of Brown's notebooks (fig. 1) might lead us to a deeper understanding of the qualities of her work on L'Orfeo and of her distinctive creative process.