L’ORFEO Hannover 2023 Luvuyo Mbundu, Nina van Essen, Nikki Treurniet, Nils Wanderer

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: L'Orfeo  
• Composer: Monteverdi Claudio  
• Libretto: Alessandro Striggio the Younger    Libretto Text, Libretto Index
• Venue & Opera Company: Staatsoper Hannover, Germany  
• Recorded: April 28, 2023
• Type: Staged Opera Live

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

Quote from Staatsoper Hannover:

Song as an expression of life and survival: Few myths deal with this as clearly as the Orpheus story. And hardly any other work touches the root of this human experience as much as Claudio Monteverdi’s setting of the myth, with which the Italian composer co-invented the opera genre around 1600. Because Orpheus has powers that other people are denied: when he sings, the animals stop and listen, he can literally soften stones. And he even manages to enter the underworld, that forbidden place where only the dead have access. From there he is allowed to bring back his beloved Eurydike, who died in the middle of the wedding preparations. But Orpheus, who was promised every happiness, who had everything, could do everything, fails – and has to live with failure…

With L’Orfeo, director Silvia Costa and her team show the brutal story of a great love: brutal because Orpheus can’t get over the death of his beloved, because he longs and is consumed and loses himself in the feedback loops of loss. In often surreal images, Costa, whose productions and installations are now celebrated throughout Europe, shows the world of cold turkey: an enigmatic dance of dreams and hallucinations, of colors and symbols. Monteverdi’s sensuous early work will be conducted by the baroque specialist David Bates, who has already conducted Trionfo. Four Last Nights brilliantly brought to life.

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