If the cold is getting you down, how about heading "To Hell and Back"? That's the title of a pretty hot presentation by the Peabody Early Music Department, which has its final performance Wednesday night at the Theatre Project.
Two works from the late 1600s by Marc-Antoine Charpentier -- "Le mariage forcé" ("The Forced Marriage") and "La descente d'Orphée aux enfers" (The Descent of Orpheus into the Underworld") -- have been cleverly intertwined by stage director Roger Brunyate, who can always be counted on to deliver thoughtful productions.
Brunyate has seized on the delicious inanity of "La mariage force," a comic piece with text by Molière and disarming music by Charpentier. The main characters are three guys who take a dim view of matrimony. The score includes wacky songs that come complete with imitations of cats, dogs, donkeys and nightingales.
How can all of this connect to a serious opera about the Orpheus legend? By putting them both in an asylum, of course.
In the same way last season's "Marat/Sade" production by Annex Theater started the moment the theater doors opened, this staging reveals inmates in various stages of confusion before a note is sounded.
The concept of patients carrying on with abandon, then gradually drawn into a session of story-telling, creates a seamless and rather absorbing bit of music theater. Whether taken literally or symbolically (Brunyate's program note suggests it could be "simply a kind of limbo of the mind"), the provocative setting works neatly.
On Tuesday night, the cast of Peabody students, all in their white hospital outfits (occasionally adorned along the way), got well into the spirit of things, moving easily from comedy to drama. The singing was uneven, not a surprise with student performances. But, aside from a couple of rough entrances and a brief memory lapse, articulation was confident. Most importantly, phrasing was always vivid.
The Baltimore Baroque Band, a Peabody ensemble led here by Adam Pearl, did impressive work throughout -- technically polished, rich in color and refined nuances. The often exquisite beauty of the "Orphée" score was conveyed with particular elegance.
All in all, a welcome wintry diversion.