FROM AROUND THE WORLD: DENVER.(Review)

Opera Colorado seems to have adopted the same survival philosophy as the shark: keep moving or die. By bringing aboard James Robinson as artistic director last year -- and, more recently, Peter Russell as general director -- the Denver-based company has installed an adventurous, forward-thinking management team that is already shaking things up. Though Robinson is still new, he has firmly established a daring sense of staging opera in a city used to undaring approaches. Earlier this year, he designed and directed Turandot (with a much-praised rolling scaffold), followed in the spring by a refreshingly updated approach to Orphee et Eurydice.

Mounting Gluck's traditionally toga-clad tale of mythical lovers in Boettcher Hall (now reduced from a circular space to a horseshoe-shaped theater), Robinson threw out the book by employing modern-dance hero Doug Varone to direct and choreograph a charming, often witty recasting of this familiar legend.

The time is Dust-Bowl America; the setting, a close-knit farming town dotted by Walker Evans-inspired clapboard houses (built smaller than life-size and nonchalantly rolled around the stage by cast members). At the opening, Orpheus (Theodora Hanslowe) is revealed as a guitar-strumming fellow sporting overalls, cradling in his arms the fallen Eurydice (Franzita Whelan), clad in a Depression-Era housedress. The journey to Hades begins with the appearance of Amor (Lynette Tapia), who descends from a billboard dressed as a hobo, though still sporting her angelic wings. She merrily leads him ...