Meet the Artists: Orpheus & Eurydice

Pittsburgh Opera is bringing Orpheus & Eurydice to the Byham Theater this November, and if you're staying through the curtain call, there's a chance to hang around for something extra. On Friday, November 20, immediately following the performance, the company is hosting Meet the Artists, a free post-show session where General Director Bill Powers interviews the stars of the production. It's a good way to hear from the people on stage while the night is still fresh.

Orpheus & Eurydice is the company's first-ever staging of the work, which they're billing as "the original Underworld love story," a new production built around the classic Greek myth. The music was composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck in 1762, with instrumentation added by Hector Berlioz in 1859. It's sung in French with English supertitles, and the staging brings in original choreography from four Attack Theatre dancers and a 33-musician orchestra. If you're not familiar with the story, it's the one about the musician who descends into the Underworld to bring his wife back—so the "Underworld love story" description fits.

This production is part of Pittsburgh Opera's 88th season, which runs five operas across four venues: the Benedum Center, the Byham Theater, the Pittsburgh CAPA School Theater, and the Bitz Opera Factory. The season includes the company's sixth world premiere in ten years, Working for the Macbeths, a new operatic comedy that gives voice to the unnamed Gentlewoman in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Beyond the main stage, the company runs Bravo Academy, a summer camp for fifth grade and up, and Outside the Salon, a series that takes opera out of traditional venues and into neighborhoods across the city.

Meet the Artists happens Friday, November 20, at 9 PM at the Byham Theater, right after the performance. It's free to attend.