![]() It is intriguing that two previous Orpheus operas, by Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini, were entitled Euridice. Orpheus (Hanna-Liisa Kirchin) averts his gaze from Euridice (Nazan Fikret), in Longborough's 2017 production of Gluck's opera Orpheus has since become an ever-more potent symbol of the power of music, inspiring numerous further operas, along with poetry, paintings, sculptures, novels, musicals, ballets, plays and films. Given the intimacy of the performance space it must have been a startling, almost overwhelming experience. The audience would have been familiar with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice but they would not have been familiar with the concept of a drama that was sung throughout. Now with noble anger’s fire, and now with rage of desire He chose, as so many before and since, to tell the story of Orpheus, and the opera opens with Music herself setting the scene:Ĭan charm and comfort the most despairing spirit This meant that when Monteverdi came to create an opera, his first venture in this form, described at the time as a favola in musica or story in music, he had a team of astonishingly sensitive and skilled artists at his disposal, used to performing as an ensemble and ready to discover and interpret a new form. A contemporary commentator, Vincenzo Giustiniani, described the Mantuan singers: ‘They moderated or increased their voices, loud or soft, heavy or light, according to the demands of the piece they were singing now slow, breaking off sometimes with a gentle sigh, now singing long passages legato or detached … They accompanied the music and the sentiment with appropriate facial expressions, glances and gestures, with no awkward movements of the mouth or hands or body which might not express the feeling of the song.’ He rehearsed and worked with these singers, cultivating a highly expressive, histrionic manner of performance, in tandem with the developments he was making with his own compositions. Monteverdi was able to draw on all these resources and, above all, on a group of highly trained singers who performed songs and madrigals and participated in theatrical entertainments. In addition there were court engineers who could construct staging and sets, artists to paint scenery, people to sew costumes and a dancing master to devise choreography. Music-making was highly prized at the ducal court and skilled instrumentalists were available, players of string, wind and brass instruments, lutenists and keyboard players. ![]() ![]() Monteverdi and the librettist Alessandro Striggio were both part of the Mantuan court, paid members of staff with duties to perform – the former as court choirmaster with overall responsibility for secular music, the latter as a secretary and clerk. What can it have been like to hear Orfeo for the first time at the Ducal Palace in Mantua in the February of 1607? Certainly it was an intimate occasion, with a select number of people, men and women, gathered – not apparently in the Palace’s theatre, but in a smaller chamber. The music, moreover, observing due propriety, serves the poetry so well that nothing more beautiful is to be heard anywhere.’ The poetry is lovely in conception, lovelier still in form and loveliest of all in diction and indeed no less was to be expected of a man as richly talented as Signor Striggio. ‘Monteverdi has shown me the words and let me hear the music of the play which Your Highness had performed, and certainly both poet and musician have depicted the inclinations of the heart so skilfully that it could not have been done better. Find out more and book online >Ĭherubini Ferrari to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, August 1607: ![]() Monteverdi's L'Orfeo is part of our 2023 festival (performances 11-18 July 2023). Music journalist and writer Henrietta Bredin explores Monteverdi and the myth of Orpheus. Love, loss and looking back Thursday 9th Mar 2023 ![]()
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