Oh dear. What has poor Orpheus, the embodiment of music itself, done to deserve this? After the horrors of Nigel Lowery’s Munich production of the Berlioz version of Gluck’s fragile azione teatrale (1/05), here comes the ur-Orfeo in a much earlier production, or rather ‘Konzept’, by Harry Kupfer. In its tired echoes of Brechtian alienation it evokes the world of the unlamented German Democratic Republic as surely as did the film Goodbye Lenin.

Let’s be positive. The Covent Garden orchestra and chorus are on good form. Jochen Kowalski sings as beautifully as Orpheus should, with no sense of strain at the top of his register. According to the booklet, he ‘rejects the label of countertenor’, but we aren’t told what label he would prefer. (He also apparently dislikes male roles written for women, which is strange coming from a man who has sung Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus and Annio in La clemenza di Tito.)

Eurydice doesn’t have much to sing in this version but Gillian Webster is fine, and properly spirited in ‘Che fiero momento’. Cupid (Amore) is very well sung by a treble, Jeremy Budd, with amazing confidence. Hartmut Haenchen conducts unobtrusively in the main, the only surprise being an emphatic orchestral Larghetto between the choruses of Act 1.

Now for the production. Orpheus has a double, played by Jean-Pierre Blanchard, so that both the man and the artist are represented. Eurydice dies in an accident after she and Orpheus, who carries a guitar, have been attending a concert. Cupid has a double, too, played by William Edwards, but of a different kind: it’s Edwards who appears on stage, while Budd sings the part from a score in the wings. There’s no sign of either the Furies or the Blessed Spirits, because the chorus, in evening dress, are placed at the side of the orchestra pit.

There are some striking images: we see Eurydice on a portable television, for instance, which goes on the blink at the moment of her second death. But the joylessness of this production is encapsulated in the finale in praise of love, where Budd joins Kowalski and Webster on stage, all three looking thoroughly grim.