Orfeo

By Claudio Monteverdi
Apollo's Fire (The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra)
Jeannette Sorrell, conductor
Performers listed below

Is it possible for one person to invent an entire form of art? You wouldn't think so. How about painting? Who invented that? Was it those cave people in France? Or was it someone even earlier, who chose a less durable medium? What about poetry? Hard to say where that originated. Surely there was poetry even before written language evolved. Maybe someone invented narrative fiction. Did someone write the first novel, or the first story? There's no telling. Fiction has been around since the first "tall tale," and who's to say when that practice got started?

But think about opera. It just may be that opera is an art form completely unto itself. Surely, it's not just another form of music, or storytelling. Opera is also stagecraft, poetry and even philosophy - all rolled into one, unique aesthetic, in which no single element works on its own. But, did one person invent it? Technically, no. Opera arose quickly, amongst a community of Italian artists toward the end of the 16th century. But the very earliest of their works have long since been lost. In fact, it was a single, exceptional artist who wrote the first opera that both survived the centuries and stuck in the repertory - the first opera in which all the elements came together into a package truly worth remembering. The man was Claudio Monteverdi, and his opera is called Orfeo. It tells the classic story of Orpheus, the man who sang his was into and out of Hell, to win back his dead wife. So maybe, in this case, someone really did invent an entire art form single-handedly.

Well, OK, that may be overstating things. But there's one thing on which all "experts" agree: Even if Monteverdi didn't write the first opera, he surely wrote the first one that anyone really wants to hear anymore - and many feel this "first opera" is still one of the best of all time.

You can hear for yourself this week on NPR World of Opera, with host Steve Curwood. Actually, you'll hear the opera more clearly than ever in an excellent production of Monteverdi's Orfeo, sung in English and played on authentic instruments, by Apollo's Fire, The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, led by Jeannette Sorrell.

Also, for the story of a real-life, modern-day Orpheus, tune in NPR's pre- and post-performance show, At the Opera, with Lou Santacroce.



Performers:
Jeffrey Strauss (Orfeo); Sandra Simon (Euridice); Sylvia Hall (Messenger); Robert Stafford (Caronte); Michael McMurray (Pluto)Marc Molomot (Apollo)


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