L'Orfeo, Favola in musica

Overview

First seen at La Monnaie in Brussels on 13 May 1998, this production of Monteverdi’s L’ORFEO seen through the eyes of Trisha Brown and René Jacobs has become an operatic classic in a few short years. This is doubtless because it offers a total symbiosis of music, text and movement – described by the critic of the Daily Telegraph of London as being ‘as close to the perfect dance opera as I have ever seen’. Or to quote Gilles Macassar in Télérama: ‘In the pit and onstage, the Brussels production has only one watchword: mobility, nimbleness, dexterity. The singers run, fly, whirl like dancers defying gravity. From the flies down to the footlights, the whole theatre is under a fantastic spell.’ For Christophe Vetter, on ConcertoNet: ‘This Orfeo can be seen again and again with immense pleasure. . . . René Jacobs’s conducting continues to arouse admiration for its precision, its stylistic rigour, its inexhaustible inventiveness and its feeling for the contrasts so vital to this repertoire.’

Keywords

Cast

Simon Keenlyside

Orfeo

Juanita Lascarro

Eirodoce / La Musica / Eco

Graciela Oddone

Messagiera

Martina Dike

Proserpina / Ninfe

Stephen Wallace

La Speranza / Pastori / Spiriti

Tómas Tómasson

Plutone

Paul Gérimon

Caronte / Pastori / Spiriti

Mauro Utzeri

Apollo

Anne Cambier

Ninfe