Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo Claudio Monteverdi / Composer Alessandro Striggio / Librettist René Schiffer / Composer, Reconstruction of the lost Bacchanale ending, 1607 Apollo’s Fire: The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra Jeannette Sorrell / Artistic Director and Conductor Karim Sulayman / Orfeo Erica Schuller / La Musica, Euridice Amanda Powell / Messagiera, Proserpina, Bacchante I Amanda Crider / Speranza, Pastore III, Bacchante II Molly Netter / Ninfa I Madeline Apple Healey / Ninfa II Owen McIntosh / Pastore I, Spirit I Jacob Perry / Pastore II, Spirit II Mischa Bouvier / Plutone Jonathan Woody / Caronte Carlos Fittante / Principal Dancer Elena Mullins / Dancer in Baccante Scene Jeannette Sorrell / Conductor and Harpsichord Sophie Daneman / Stage Director Sunday Afternoon, April 15, 2018 at 4:00 Hill Auditorium Ann Arbor 87th Performance of the 139th Annual Season 139th Annual Choral Union Series Media partnership provided by WGTE 91.3 FM. Special thanks to Jenna Bacolor, Joseph Gascho, Seema Jolly, Matthew Ozawa, and Ann Arbor Public Schools Community Education and Recreation (Rec & Ed) for their participation in events surrounding this afternoon’s performance. Special thanks to Tom Thompson of Tom Thompson Flowers, Ann Arbor, for his generous contribution of lobby floral art for this afternoon’s performance. Apollo’s Fire and Jeannette Sorrell appear by arrangement with Columbia Artists Management, LLC. Apollo’s Fire CD recordings, including a new Orpheus album, are for sale in the lobby at intermission and after the concert. The artists will sign CDs following the performance. This production is made possible by major grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation. In consideration of the artists and the audience, please refrain from the use of electronic devices during the performance. The photography, sound recording, or videotaping of this performance is prohibited. PROGRAM Claudio Monteverdi L’Orfeo | Orpheus in the Underworld Favola in Musica, 1607 (A Fable in Music) Prologue Act I: The fields of Thrace. Act II: A continuation of the previous scene. Intermission Act III: The bands of the River Styx, gateway to Hades. Act IV: The court of Pluto in Hades. Act V: The fields of Thrace. This afternoon's performance will be performed in Italian with English supertitles. 3 SYNOPSIS Prologue. The personification of Music she must abandon him there. Orfeo addresses the noble audience (i.e. the cries out at her departure, and startles court of Mantua) and introduces the Caronte, the oarsman. He demands that subject of Orfeo, the famous singer of Orfeo turn back. In a magical aria, Orfeo antiquity. draws on all his musical powers in an attempt to win over Caronte; but to no Act I. The fields of Thrace. Nymphs and avail. Finally, Orfeo’s music puts him to shepherds are gathered to celebrate sleep. He steals the oarsman’s boat and the wedding of Orfeo and Euridice. A crosses the river. shepherd invites the party to sing to Hymen, the goddess of marriage, for her Act IV. The court of Pluto in Hades. blessings. Following a dance, a shepherd Proserpina, Pluto’s wife, has heard asks Orfeo to delight them with a song. Orfeo’s song and is moved to plead with Orfeo sings a hymn of thanks to his her husband on Orfeo’s behalf. Pluto father Apollo and his image, the sun, cannot resist Proserpina, and orders that and then expresses his love to Euridice, Orfeo may have Euridice back, provided who had formerly scorned him. She he does not look back as she follows sings of her own love for him, and the him out of Hades. Orfeo leads Euridice dance resumes. A shepherd calls them joyfully from Hades, but cannot obey this to give thanks at the temple, and the condition. Euridice is taken back to the nymphs and shepherds present prayerful dead forever, and Orfeo is expelled from meditations on the transitory nature of Hades. sorrow and joy. Act V. The fields of Thrace. Orfeo, on the Act II. A continuation of the previous edge of madness, wanders in hopeless scene. A shepherd invites Orfeo to despair, asking the mountains and rest under the trees, and they sing in valleys to weep with him. He hears his praise of the stream, the meadows echo and begins to converse with it. In and the woods, where Pan, the god bitterness, he rejects all womankind, of shepherds, wanders. The merry since none are as perfect as Euridice. company is interrupted by the sudden (From this point on, Monteverdi’s arrival of the messenger, Sylvia, who music is lost but the original 1607 brings the devastating news that libretto continues as follows.) Orfeo is Euridice has died, having been bitten overheard by a band of wild Bacchant by a snake. Orfeo vows to descend into women, worshippers of Bacchus. He Hades and bring Euridice back to earth. hides himself. The women, enraged by With bitter lamentations, the nymphs his rejection of all womankind, burst and shepherds leave to pay their final on stage in pursuit. While hunting homage to the dead Euridice. Orfeo, they sing praises to Bacchus and celebrate his gift of wine. At the end Act III. The bands of the River Styx, of their song, Orfeo is discovered. A gateway to Hades. Orfeo has found his stylized battle dance ensues, in which way guided by Hope (Speranza), but Orfeo meets his demise. 4 GREEK TRAGEDY, REBORN AS BAROQUE OPERA The ancient Greeks knew the power proposed that speech should set of music. It is not surprising that one the pattern for song. The Camerata of their greatest myths centers on believed the Greeks had used a style a musician. As an archetype of the in-between speech and song — and inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the that Greek drama was predominantly most significant figures in classical sung rather than spoken. (Most mythology — portrayed in art, poetry, scholars today still agree that Greek music, and painting. He was the son drama was at least partly sung or of Apollo (god of music and healing), chanted.) The Camerata composers who sang and played the lyre to charm were especially fascinated with the wild beasts. His ultimate challenge story of Orpheus, since Orpheus was was to charm Caronte, the oarsman the great singer and musician of of the River Styx, who served as the Greek antiquity. gatekeeper to Hades. In the myth of As the Camerata set out to recreate Orpheus, the power of Music takes on ancient Greek music-drama, their the forces of Death. experiments led to the development Two thousand years later, the lost of monody and recitativo — quasi- wisdom of the ancient Greeks became spoken melodic text in which the the focus of Italian intellectuals and notes are in service of the words, and artists at the end of the Renaissance. the words are in service of dramatic The first years of the 17th century expression. The job of the composer, in Italy became one of the most and certainly the performer, was innovative moments in Western to communicate the affetto (the history, as musicians tried to recreate “affection” or emotional mood). To the lost musical style — and the lost allow the singer as much dramatic emotional power — of the ancient freedom as possible, the instrumental Greek dramas. In Firenze (Florence), accompaniment was light and spare: a group of musicians, poets, and a couple of violas da gamba, a couple intellectuals known as the Florentine of lutes, and harpsichord or organ. Camerata believed that Renaissance This became known as basso continuo music had become corrupt. They accompaniment — an essential sought a way to return to the lost feature of Baroque opera. Camerata forms and style of the ancient Greeks, composer Jacopo Peri first set the which they believed would lead not story of Orpheus and Euridice to music only to greater music, but also an in 1600. His rival Caccini published his improved society. own version of the story a few months The Camerata members were later. intrigued by ancient descriptions of The great Claudio Monteverdi was the emotional and moral effect of a few years younger than Peri and Greek drama. Though the music of the Caccini. Though living in Mantua, he Greeks was lost, clues to its nature was deeply immersed in the concepts could be found in the writing of the of the Florentine Camerata. Working Greek thinker Aristoxenus, who had with the prominent poet Alessandro 5 Striggio as librettist, Monteverdi libretto was printed and distributed brought the fledging invention of twice for the two premiere opera to fulfilment as a musical art performances at the palace of form evoking ancient Greek drama. Mantua in 1607. Both printings Thus, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo follows contain Striggio’s verses for the the conventions of classical Greek classical Greek ending of the Orpheus tragedy: a prologue (from pro and story: Orpheus, having rejected all logos, “preliminary speech”) features womankind, is attacked and torn to a character who introduces the pieces by a band of wild Bacchantes drama and explains the background (drunken female worshippers of of the ensuing story. In the case of Bacchus, the god of wine). This is L’Orfeo, the prologue is delivered how the tale ends in the myth as by the personification of Music. handed down to us by Virgil and Ovid. Then follows the parodos (entry of However, the manuscript score used the characters/group) — here we at those 1607 performances is lost. meet the shepherds and nymphs What survives, aside from the who are gathered for the wedding printed libretto, is a slightly later of Orpheus and Euridice. After this, version of the score, published in the story unfolds through episodes, 1609.