Opera is born
- Lyn Richards
- Feb 3
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 4
For Monteverdi, "The end of all good music is to affect the soul". To do this, good music communicates ideas, speaks of thoughts and emotions. Here's an example.
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”, he is told at the gates of Hades. But still hoping, the desperate Orpheus serenades the ghastly ferryman who refused to take him across the river Styx. "Possente spirto - Mighty spirit and fearsome deity/ without whom no soul separated from its body/ can presume to gain passage to the other shore..." The music triumphs, the ferryman sleeps and Orpheus steals the boat to cross into hell and find Eurydice.
Here are the words of this long, extraordinary solo song. Now listen as the music speaks for Orpheus - his despair, hope, pleading. Here is Christian Gerhaher in the full opera setting, at the Bavarian State Opera. Check out Bachtrack's review of that 2014 performance here. "Whenever one watches Gerhaher, one always has the the impression of discovering the art of singing anew, and this performance was no exception. Like his late teacher Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gerhaher sings with a combination of gripping concision and astonishing lightness that is a true revelation."
Or for the music of Possente spirto closeup, listen to this recording session from Nicolas Achten and his early music group, Scherzi Musicali. (He's one of the few singers who accompanies himself on lute, theorbo, harp or harpsichord, but here, his Orpheus plays a harp, not the more travel-friendly lute!)
This was opera. And it was very new, in 1607.
Enter Monteverdi
Do you want to know more about this extraordinary composer? There are many resources online detailing his biography - here's Wikipedia for a start. More detail here.
Interested in his developing philosophy of music? There's a brief account here.
"Text first, rhythm second, melody third", this was Monteverdi's account of what he termed "the second practice", the new, modernist music. "In the first, harmony and counterpoint took precedence over the text; in the second, the need to express the meaning of the words surpassed any other concern. In the baroque, it is the spirit of the second practice—using the power of music to communicate—that came to dominate the era." More here.
It's also a different sort of music. Compare with Peri's operas, featuring polyphony and recitative (see the previous post.) “Possente spirto is famous for the written-out ornamentation of the voice-part, and for its instrumental obbligati." Those "obligatory" solos of voice and instruments were new to the "second practice", used "to help convey expressive text. While Monteverdi’s use of stile moderno was occasionally met with criticism, he maintained this innovative trend was a natural and logical progression in the pursuit of artistic truth." Lots more here.
It's not only in opera of course - Baroque music adorns madrigals, church music and dances for the courts and the glorious major works of composers who wrote no operas - Vivaldi, Bach and Telemann... Wikipedia lists them all here! (Back in last week's post there's more about Baroque.) But this fitting of music to text and emotion, poetry and drama created opera as we know it. So Monteverdi's Orfeo is not only the first surviving opera, but also the first from this belief in music as a powerful communicator of text.
And yes, there were more. Monteverdi's three surviving operas (of ten he wrote) are L'Orfeo (1607), Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643). Next week, we go to Poppea. What had become of the "second practice", three decades on? You can guess from the final, famous triumphant love duet of the two anti-heroes, Nero and his mistress queen. "Pur ti miro, pur ti godo - I gaze upon you, I desire you". Listen to that music tell triumph and desire!
L'Orfeo
You know the Orpheus story, as did everyone - the fascination with Greek poetry and plays had dominated Italian culture for some time. The Orpheus legend had already been set to music in Peri's second pre-Baroque opera, now lost. Monteverdi, perhaps deliberately, chose to use that story to demonstrate what the "second practice" of music could do to human drama.
There's a full account of the opera and its plot, here. And if you have 12 minutes to spare, this video tells it in terms of the music.
What's so revolutionary about this work? Here's a quick discussion from Garsington Opera's director and conductor.
Our production
We are playing the famous production in Zurich, 1978, conducted by Nicholas Harnoncourt. It's framed as a court entertainment, as the opera indeed premiered, in 1607, in the ducal palace of the Gonzagas in Mantua.
Orfeo is sung by Philippe Huttenlocher and Euridice by Dietlinde Turban. The production was praised for its setting and costumes, as well as the cast of singers.
The full opera version of this production is available on YouTube here, though subtitles are not available. (If you want to revisit Possente spirto, it starts at 54mins. ```1)
Full opera online?
[Whenever possible I locate and note in this blog a YouTube video of a full version of our week's opera, for those who couldn't attend our meeting, or those who would like to revisit the work.]
There are several other excellent full opera versions of Orfeo online, but few with English subtitles. Here, you can view a production from renowned early music conductor Jordi Savall, in Barcelona, 2002. (His wife and daughter have lead roles – his then wife, Montserrat Figueras, sings La Música and their daughter Arianna Savall is Eurídice.) No subtitles, but a chance to see how the music speaks the text. Furio Zanasi is Orfeo: Possente spirto starts at 1.00hr.
But for brilliant theatre and subtitles in English, here's the gem, a superb production from Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists.
This production toured Europe in 2017, the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi’s birth. Their website here gives images and context. Bachtrack reviewed the production at Salzburg. It was filmed in Venice. There are subtitles, set in Italian but you can change to English - explore the controls on the right hand side of the screen. Orfeo is Krystian Adam (Go to 103 for his riveting Possente spirto.)
Lyn. 3/2/25
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