Organization

Singer

Tenor

Ian Bostridge

Orfeo

Soprano

Roberta Invernizzi

Proserpina

Francesco Marsiglia

Apollo

Bass

Fabrizio Beggi

Pluto

The nymph

Marina De Liso

The messenger

Conductor

Fabio Biondi

Ugo Guagliardo

Caronte

Monica Piccinini

Euridice

Music

Hope

Valentino Buzza

Second shepherd

Filippo Mineccia

First shepherd

Baritone

Matheus Pompeu

Third shepherd

First spirit

Second spirit

Echo

MusikTheater an der Wien

Others

Europa Galante

Orchestra

Europe gallant

RIAS Chamber Choir

Italian

L'Orfeo -  (Orfeo)

Vienna

Austria

Theater an der Wien

L'Orfeo

Public

Private

Approved

In the 16th century, the Florentine Camerata set out to bring the ancient Greek tragedy back to life. Since these humanistically educated nobles assumed that the dramas of antiquity had been sung during the performances, they dealt with the relationship between language and music. They preferred subjects in which singing seemed plausible, and no other figure applies this approach better than the singer Orpheus. In 1607 the Academia degli invaghiti in Mantua commissioned the composer Claudio Monteverdi, who was in the service of the Princes of Mantua, to create a musical Orpheus drama. The poet Alessandro Striggio arranged the libretto for Monteverdi, which focused on Orpheus' supplication to the gods of the underworld. Monteverdi found a progressive solution for the relationship between text and music that would shape the future of opera: He defined two levels of dramatic singing, on the one hand the recitative for general dialogue and on the other hand musically closed forms for the moments in which the music is the focus should stand. He succeeded in affectively reinforcing the text with musical means, and with this technique he provided the decisive initial spark for a genre that began with a mistake, because dialogues were spoken in ancient theater. The hero of the title is at the center of Monteverdi's Favola in musica. From the joys of perfect love happiness he plunges into complete despair over the death of his Eurydice, who has just been married to him. Orpheus is not ready to accept this stroke of fate, but after causing the final loss of his wife himself, he remains in complete solitude. With the prologue and the end, Monteverdi shows how unreservedly he trusted music in the new theater genre. If the personified music itself appears at the beginning to announce Orpheus' deeds, at the end his father Apollo, god of music, intervenes in the plot, and together they ascend singing into the sky, where Orpheus is the image of his Eurydice in the sun and see again in the stars.

English

Orfeo by Monteverdi, From (2022/2022), Conductor Fabio Biondi, Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

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Ensemble

Program, About & Synopsis

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