Monteverdi's L'Orfeo

The Opera

First performed in 1607, the music is right at the birth of the Italian Baroque, near the time of the death of Elizabeth I of England.  This is the earliest opera to appear in the repertoire in the 21st century.

Since the purpose of the Florentine Camerata was to recreate Greek drama, the stories of these earliest operas come from ancient European literature, but curiously not from Greek drama.  There doesn't seem to be even one example of an actual Greek drama used as the basis for an opera by these early opera composers.  Their operas were more likely to be from the Roman Ovid's Metamorphosis, a set of transformation myths.  Early opera composers felt that a singer who could charm the gods to release his lover from hell was the best possible subject for a work about singing.

Early operas produced in Mantua were Claudio Monteverdi's (1567-1643) L'Orfeo (1607), considered the outstanding example of early opera, and his Ariana (1608), now lost.  Today L'Orfeo, the most famous of the early operas, stands at number 72 in the list of most frequently performed operas.  L'Orfeo is unusual for the fact that it includes brass instruments, instead of just the usual strings and continuo.  All the high voices were sung by castrati.

There are no hit tunes from L'Orfeo, but this is as close as we come.  Monteverdi was a far better musician than either Caccini or Peri, in fact probably the greatest of his era.  He composed in all the styles of his time and place, and probably invented a few himself.  You can hear that this music is far more sophisticated though it is only a very few years later.
 
The Story

We are greeted by a prologue like in Pagliacci.
 
 

 

Act I

Orfeo and his Euridice are in a field with nymphs and shepherds.  There is dancing.  He sings of his happiness and goes back to town to prepare for his wedding, leaving Euridice behind.

Act II

Orfeo returns to find that Euridice has been bitten by a snake and has died.  Because he holds so much faith in the power of his singing, he decides to descend into hell and plead with Pluto for her freedom.

Act III

Orfeo arrives at the gates of hell and tries to persuade the ferryman to take him in.  When this doesn't work, Orfeo soothes him to sleep and steals his boat.

Act IV

Now we are in the underworld, and Orfeo has persuaded Proserpina to allow him to take Euridice.  She in turn persuades Plutone to allow this, but he agrees only on the condition that Orfeo must not look back at her until they reach the surface.  He starts out boldly but soon gives in and looks back.  Euridice fades away.

Act V

Back in Thrace there is lamenting and a renunciation of love.  Apollo descends and takes Orfeo away with him into the heavens.  Apparently there was originally an ending where Orfeo is assaulted by followers of Bacchus and driven off.

Complete Film

This is an excellent recreation of that opera with Harnoncourt conducting.


 

Had enough?  Go back to Puccini.

Love it and want more?  See the Venetian operas later in the century.

I love Baroque but want only Handel and Vivaldi.