In the 1580s, a small group of Florentine artists, statesmen, writers, and musicians known as the Camerata decided to create a mixture of music and theater based on Greek drama. They actually had no idea what Greek drama sounded or looked like (something that remains a mystery), but they proposed a drama with a single vocal line supported by a simple accompaniment that would reproduce the rhythms of natural speech and emphasize the words: this became known as "recitar cantando" or recitative. The result was a simply sung, or rather declaimed, piece.
The first to write an opera in this vein was one Jacopo Peri, who composed Dafne in 1597 (now lost) and Eurydice in 1600, but the first great composer to write in the new genre was Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643): his Orfeo (1607) is one of the earliest operatic works ever written, and certainly the earliest in the regular operatic repertoire. Moreover, it was a rather symbolic beginning, since the Greek hero Orpheus is the ideal operatic protagonist, a musician who enchants the gods with his singing in order to win back his dead wife Eurydice. The power of music! In Renaissance Neoplatonist philosophy, the figure of Orpheus (who undergoes a kind of resurrection) was also identified with Christ, giving the story an additional allegorical dimension.
Although Monteverdi followed precedent in making the music the servant of the text, he also realized that something more musically interesting was needed to hold attention than simple declamation, and so Orpheus' declamation often blossoms into songs with dancing rhythms and sophisticated instrumental accompaniment. Strong melodies are also found in the ritornelli, instrumental passages that punctuate the drama. Monteverdi was inspired not only by the experiments of Peri and others, but also by the ornate and dramatic tradition of Venetian sacred music, and even medieval mystery plays - and he combined these elements into a convincing whole. Nevertheless, the opera gives us a good idea of the simplicity and directness to which he aspired. And it also set a trend: the history of opera is a repetitive cycle of the gradual "corruption" of this ideal by an ever greater emphasis on purely musical and vocal beauty and the attempt to return to something like pure first principles.
Another characteristic of the operas of Monteverdi and his contemporaries was that he wrote in a courtly environment with private commissions. Monteverdi's employer was the court of the Gonzagas at Mantua in Lombardy, northern Italy. Orfeo was first seen and heard not in a theater, but in a private room in the Duke of Mantua's palace, before a small audience placed very close to the singers - a place that facilitated the intensity of the experience.
[Anselm Feuerbach - Orpheus und Eurydike - 1719]
The opera is divided into five acts, as follows
Prologue
Consists of an instrumental toccata and a vocal "La musica. The toccata is a virtuoso performance by Renaissance wind instruments such as: cornetto, sackbut and baroque trumpet. La musica" is a vocal performance of five verses and is an ode to the power of music.
Act I
The wedding feast of the singer-musician Orpheus and Eurydice in the valley. Nymphs and shepherds dance and nymphs sing hymns to Hymenaeus, the god of marriage, to bring peace and happiness to the bride and groom. This is pastoral music.
Act II
The celebration continues until a messenger informs Orpheus that Eurydice has died of a snakebite. After expressing his grief and disbelief ("You are dead, my life, and I am breathing?"), Orfeo declares his intention to descend to the underworld and persuade its ruler to allow Euridice to return to life. Otherwise, he says, "I will remain with you in the company of death. He leaves, and the chorus resumes its lament.
[Nymphs Listening To The Songs of Orpheus, by Charles François Jalabert.]
Act III
Accompanied by Speranza (Hope), Orpheus reaches the underworld, where he is stopped by the border guard, the ferryman Charon. Orpheus begs Charon to let him enter the world of the dead, but Charon continues to refuse. However, when Orfeo picks up his lyre and plays, Charon is lulled to sleep. Seizing his chance, Orfeo steals the ferryman's boat and crosses the river into the underworld, while a chorus of spirits reflects that nature cannot defend itself against man: "He has tamed the sea with fragile wood and scorned the fury of the winds."
Act IV
In the underworld, Proserpina, Queen of Hades, deeply moved by Orfeo's singing, asks King Pluto, her husband, to release Euridice. However, Pluto makes it a condition that Orpheus must not look back on his way out, or he will lose her forever: A single glance will condemn him to eternal loss. Orfeo enters, leading Euridice, singing confidently that he will rest on his wife's white bosom that day. But then a note of doubt creeps in: "Who will assure me that she will follow?" Finally, Orfeo looks around and immediately the image of Euridice begins to fade. She sings in despair: "Wilt thou lose me through too much love?" and disappears. Orfeo tries to follow her, but is pulled away by an invisible force. The chorus of spirits sings that Orfeo, having conquered Hades, has in turn been conquered by his passions.
Act V
Back in the fields of Thrace, Orfeo has a long soliloquy in which he laments his loss, praises Euridice's beauty, and resolves that his heart will never again be pierced by Cupid's arrow (in the earlier version, this renunciation of women is the reason why the Bacchantes, wild, drunken women, decide to kill him). However, Apollo intervenes and takes Orpheus among the immortals. From heaven, he can see his beloved forever. A chorus of shepherds concludes that "he who sows in suffering will reap the fruit of every grace" before the opera ends.
Orfeo is an astonishing achievement for an art form still in its infancy!
Libretto in Italian and English (PDF)
Listen: Les Arts Florissants / Paul Agnew on France Musique. For this performance, Paul Agnew wanted to focus on the text and the music, and chose a particularly sober set. Alongside Agnew: Cyril Auvity as Orpheus, and a host of singers, many of them graduates of the Jardin des Voix (Les Arts Florissants' own academy) - not to mention the costume design by Alain Blanchot.
Also listen to Monteverdi's Vespers of the Blessed Virgin in "Vocal and Choral Masterworks" at this blog
Baroque & Classical Opera