Thank You! It is with sincere appreciation and gratitude that we salute Vivian E. Pilar for her leadership and support of this production. Thank You! It is with sincere appreciation and gratitude that we salute Greig Dunn & Robert Maclennan for their leadership and support of this production. Thank You! It is with sincere appreciation and gratitude that we salute The Spem in Alium Fund for their leadership and support of this production. ORFEO Favola in musica Claudio Monteverdi Cast (in order of appearance) La Musica Katherine Hill Pastori Kevin Skelton, Laura Pudwell, Bud Roach, David Roth, Cory Knight Ninfa Michele DeBoer Orfeo Charles Daniels Euridice Katherine Hill Silvia (Messagiera) Laura Pudwell Speranza Laura Pudwell Caronte John Pepper Proserpina Michele DeBoer Plutone David Roth Spiriti Cory Knight, Bud Roach, Kevin Skelton Eco Cory Knight Apollo Kevin Skelton ORCHESTRA Étienne Asselin 2nd cornetto Maximilien Brisson tenor sackbut Peter Christensen tenor sackbut Felix Deak viola da gamba Emily Eng 2nd viola David Fallis director, organ, harpsichord Margaret Gay cello Geneviève Gilardeau 2nd violin Ben Grossman percussion Lucas Harris theorbo Paul Jenkins harpsichord, organ Matthew Jennejohn 1st cornetto Jeanne Lamon 1st violin Stephen Marvin 1st viola Terry McKenna theorbo, baroque guitar Alison Melville 1st recorder Joëlle Morton violone Catherine Motuz alto sackbut Linda Pearse bass sackbut Bud Roach baroque guitar Colin Savage 2nd recorder Julia Seager-Scott baroque harp Nathaniel Wood bass sackbut Tonight’s Performers are: Staff & Administration THE TORONTO CONSORT David Fallis, Artistic Director Michelle Knight, Managing Director David Fallis, conductor Adam Thomas Smith, Director of Michele DeBoer Audience Engagement and Education Ben Grossman Nellie Austin, Bookkeeper Katherine Hill Chris Abbott, Graphic Designer Paul Jenkins Yara Jakymiw, Season Brochure Graphic Designer Terry McKenna Martin Reis, Derek Haukenfreres Alison Melville & Ruth Denton, Box Office John Pepper Peter Smurlick, Database Consultant Laura Pudwell Gordon Baker, Stage Manager Cecilia Booth, Front of House, Volunteer Coordinator WITH SPECIAL GUESTS Gordon Peck, Technical Director Sabrina Cuzzocrea, CD Sales and Event Assistant Heather Engli, Touring Charles Daniels LA ROSE DES VENTS Felix Deak Emily Eng Étienne Asselin Maximilien Brisson Margaret Gay Board of Directors Geneviève Gilardeau Peter Christensen Lucas Harris Matthew Jennejohn Catherine Motuz Heather Turnbull, President Cory Knight Ann Posen, Past President Jeanne Lamon Linda Pearse Nathaniel Wood Harry Deeg, Treasurer Stephen Marvin Frances Campbell, Secretary Joëlle Morton John Ison Bud Roach Trini Mitra David Roth Sara Morgan Colin Savage Anita Nador Julia Seager-Scott Tiffany Grace Tobias Kevin Skelton Andrea Whitehead The Toronto Consort is a Proud Member of Follow us on Facebook and Instagram! @TorontoConsort 427 Bloor Street West, Toronto ON M5S 1X7 Box Office 416-964-6337 Admin 416-966-1045 | [email protected] TorontoConsort.org bloorstculturecorridor.com ABOUT US Top Row: David Fallis, Alison Melville, Michele DeBoer, John Pepper, Paul Jenkins Bottom Row: Katherine Hill, Terry McKenna, Laura Pudwell, Ben Grossman Photo Credit: Paul Orenstein Since its founding in 1972, The Toronto Consort to Europe and Great Britain four times, and has become internationally recognized for its frequently across Canada and into the US. excellence in the performance of medieval, The Toronto Consort has made recordings renaissance and early baroque music. Led by Artistic for the CBC Collection, Berandol, SRI, Dorian, Director David Fallis, nine of Canada’s leading and currently Marquis Classics, with 10 CDs to early music specialists have come together to form its credit, two of which have been nominated The Toronto Consort, whose members include for Juno awards. The most recent recording both singers and instrumentalists (lute, recorder, (The Italian Queen of France) was released in 2017. guitar, flute, early keyboards and percussion). Recently, the ensemble has been called Each year The Toronto Consort offers a upon to produce music for historical-drama subscription series in Toronto, presented in the TV series, including The Tudors, The Borgias and beautiful acoustic of the recently-renovated The Vikings, all produced by the cable network 700-seat Jeanne Lamon Hall, at the Trinity- Showtime. The Toronto Consort recorded St. Paul’s Centre in downtown Toronto. The the soundtrack for Atom Egoyan’s award- ensemble also tours regularly, having been winning film The Sweet Hereafter. PROGRAM NOTES ”Monteverdi has let me see the verses the first great “sung play” or, to use a word and hear the music of the comedy which your Monteverdi would have wondered at, opera. Highness commissioned, and in truth the poet Orfeo is not, strictly speaking, the first opera. and musician have represented the emotions of There were three or four plays sung throughout the spirit so well that none have bettered them.” from the years immediately preceding Orfeo, So wrote, in 1607, the monk Cherubino only some of whose scores survive in their Ferrari to his friend, Prince Gonzaga, on entirety. Significantly, two of these are on the the performance of a play by Alessandro same subject as Orfeo – that of the Arcadian Striggio the Younger, called L’Orfeo, with musician who, upon the death of his bride music by Claudio Monteverdi, the director Eurydice, decides to try and reclaim her from of music at the Mantuan court. hell, using the power of his song to charm the The reaction of the first audience to the infernal deities. The power of music is the central work was favourable. The Grand Duke of theme of the myth, more specifically the power Mantua was so impressed that he ordered a of song, and its triumph over death. A fitting second performance for a week later, in order subject, then, for the first operas, which were that more of the ladies of the city could see it. self-conscious attempts to create music which (Few women had, in fact, been present at the might move the emotions even more powerfully opening because it had been performed for than words alone were known to do, to create a gathering of the Accademia degl’Invaghiti, a music which had reclaimed its Orphic roots. sort of aristocratic arts club which sponsored The earliest operas were products various events, but whose membership was of academies, gatherings of aristocratic exclusively male.) One writer remarked that intellectuals who discussed how modem music “the poetry is lovely in conception, lovelier might regain the power the ancient writers still in form, and loveliest of all in diction,” attested to. The most important result of all and added that “the music, observing due this talk and experimentation was a move away propriety, serves the poetry so well that nothing from the sophisticated polyphonic art that had more beautiful is to be heard anywhere.” dominated Renaissance music, to a singing style Then, however, Orfeo was left behind which gave the text dominance, and in which the as “sung plays” developed from courtly rhythm and meaning of the words would dictate entertainment to spectacles for a paying the music. Like any period of experimentation, public, and after those first two performances the late sixteenth and early seventeenth in 1607, it was, as far as we know, never centuries witnessed a variety of ways in which performed again until Vincent d’Indy directed this basic new principle manifested itself. Some a concert performance in French at the composers, like Caccini, still wrote music which Paris Schola Cantorum in 1904. Since then, was basically in song form, but asked that it be of course, it has taken its rightful place as sung with a certain “refined negligence” as far as the rhythms were concerned. Others were realizing the bass line when accompanying more thoroughgoing, and wrote music which singers were lutes, harps and organs, was to be performed “senza misura” (without a less often harpsichord, and usually steady beat). A contemporary of Monteverdi’s, without the addition of a single-line Marco da Gagliano, pointed to the rhythmic instrument, such as cello or bassoon. freedom of this style of singing when he called Despite this variety of musical styles, it recitar cantando – speaking while singing. Orfeo is a carefully constructed work, elegant in Within this latter category variations existed, its formal design. It begins with a Toccata (to be as sometimes significant harmonies were played on muted trumpets) during which (one introduced, or bass lines were given rhythmic assumes) the Gonzaga princes took their seats at coherence by various repetition schemes. The the first performance. The Prologue makes clear result was that a sophisticated musical mind what has already been suggested by the choice like Monteverdi’s had a wide range of options of subject, namely, that the real theme of the upon which to draw, and one of the strengths evening is the power of music. Thus, it is Music of Orfeo is its integration of so many types herself who addresses us at the opening (not of text rendering. Indeed Orfeo is a virtual Tragedy as was the case in the earlier operatic compendium of early 17th-century vocal and Orfeos) cataloguing her powers and making sure instrumental forms, some hearkening back we listen, not just watch. Thereafter, the acts to the late Renaissance, others in the most are separated by choruses and dances, much avant-garde style of the emerging Baroque. in the way intermedii were used to separate the The choruses that close Acts III and IV acts in productions of classical tragedies at the might well have been written by Philippe time. Like the best intermedii, these choruses Verdelot in the 1530’s. The brass canzonas which relate closely to the action just finished, either in accompany them are similarly old-fashioned. the manner of people who are taking part, like On the other hand, the instrumental interludes the festive end to Act I or the mournful end to to Orpheus’ famous aria “Possente spirto” are Act II, or a chorus which points out the “moral products of the virtuoso soloistic style current of the story” as in Acts III and IV.