The Opéra de Monte-Carlo is producing its first-ever film, a screen adaptation of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice starring the mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli — who also directs the Monegasque house — in the role of Orpheus.

Filming has just begun on the project, which the Opéra describes as an international production designed to lift the 18th-century opera off the stage and turn it into a work made for the cinema and digital platforms. The aim, the house says, is to carry the myth to audiences well beyond the opera world. The film is due to be presented to the public during 2027.

The cast and creative team

Bartoli, who has sung Orpheus on stages around the world, takes one of her signature roles; the part was written for a castrato voice, which the Opéra says suits her range. The soprano Mélissa Petit, a frequent stage partner of Bartoli’s, plays Eurydice. Direction and screenplay are by Davide Livermore and Paolo Gep Cucco, who work regularly with the Opéra, and the film will be distributed by Unitel, a leading German producer and distributor of filmed music.

‘Making the impossible possible’

Bartoli framed the move to film as a chance to escape the limits of the stage. “To conceive Orphée et Eurydice for the cinema is to have the possibility of making the impossible possible,” she said. “Cinema allows us to play with greater freedom and to free ourselves from the constraints of space and technology that belong to the opera stage.”

She said the universal story would let the Opéra “address a far wider audience than opera lovers alone”, offering those who do not usually go to opera houses “a chance to discover the marvellous music of Gluck”.

What’s next for Bartoli

Away from the screen, Bartoli will give concerts across Europe before taking the role of Isabella in Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri, a new Opéra de Monte-Carlo production with the period-instrument ensemble Les Musiciens du Prince. She will then sing Rosina in Le Barbier de Séville at the Staatsoper in Berlin and the Opera of Rome, where she will mark 40 years since her artistic debut.

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Main photo: Cecilia Bartoli, credit: Orphée et Eurydice