Monteverdi: L'Orfeo

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Music reviews of Monteverdi: L'Orfeo

Music Review: The First Great Opera
Rating: 4 Stars

The whole is extremely mannered, there's no attempt at naturalism in this opera. Each act primarily portrays a single emotion--joyous love in the first, despair in the second and fourth, hope in the third and again joy in the final act. Most of the action takes place offstage--in fact, there's very little action at all. The story essentially exists so that Orpheus can sing, and sing he does.

There's a fine moment in the first act, in which Orpheus sings about how sad he was before he met Euridice, who has filled his life with joy. Considering the fate soon to befall him, this is an especially ironic bit of text. In the second act, the highlight is the moment when Orpheus is told of Euridice's death, and his haunting lament, Tu se morta; Thou art perished. Monteverdi's makes fine use of word painting that is definitely worth noticing. As Orpheus sings "morte" (death) or that he will go down to Hades "N'andro sicuro a piu profondi abissi" the melodic line descends; as he sings farewell to the skies and sun, ("a dio Cielo, e sole a dio") the line rises. In the third act, I'm amused by Orpheus's song to Charon, the ferryman across the river Styx. Unable to move Charon with the depth of his entreaty, Orpheus eventually suffers the fate that far too many musicians have done--he unexpectedly sings Charon to sleep! But for Orpheus, this unanticipated lullaby is a blessing in disguise, as he takes advantage of Charon's somnolence to ferry himself across the river of the dead. I can't help suspecting that Monteverdi and his librettist shared some amusement at this plot twist.

Ian Bostridge, who overall is quite convincing, sings the role of Orpheus. Tu se morta is one of my favorite pieces of music of all time, and I have to admit that Bostridge's interpretation of that particular aria doesn't chill me. Another highlight of the third act is Euridice's lament, when Orpheus has just turned around, resulting in her eternal banishment from the world above. Originally all the women's roles would have been sung by castrati; men who had intentionally had their testicles removed before their voices changed to preserve their high range. Fortunately this practice has been abandoned and the role of Euridice is beautifully sung by Patrizia Ciofi.

For a host of reasons, and surely not primarily the lack of castrati, purists will argue about the authenticity of the entire performance; it is an admittedly emotionally expressive one, a touch Romantic in nature at times, with occasional rubatos that seem musically plausible if not historically accurate. It's a matter of some musicological debate, but for most listeners, purely academic. What really counts for most of us is whether the music captivates us. Personally I'm particularly taken not only by the melodic lines and the modal harmonies, but also by the fascinating sounds of the Renaissance instruments. L'Orfeo is the first known work in which instrumentation is specified; and it's a hugely rich variety of sounds, with violins, celli, viols, recorders, lutes, harpsichord, organ, and a very strange looking strummed instrument called a theorbo. There's more-for the act in the underworld Monteverdi employs cornetti (early trumpets, more or less) and sackbuts, precursors to the trombones. The instrumentalists do a fine rendition, although in a few odd moments the bass is uncharacteristically boomy and I'm not entirely convinced by some of the instrumental timbral choices in a few spots. Soloists and choir sing beautifully and although I've commented on the Romantic flexibility of tempo, this should not be misconstrued to mean the vocal approach is Romantic. It is not, there are no wild Verdian vibrati; pleasantly, Bostridge and his colleagues do not consider themselves Pavarotti pretenders.

The opera concludes with a dramatically unconvincing Deus ex machina; that convention of early drama in which one or more of the pantheon of Gods would descend from the heavens, lifting the tragic hero out of his despair and raising him skyward. In L'Orfeo's final chorus we are told that obedience to God rewards sorrow with grace. It's not a very compelling message from the modern perspective, but remember this harks from a time where royalty was believed divinely granted, and the composer surely needed to court his patron.

Description of Monteverdi: L'Orfeo

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