'ORFEO: Hades and Heaven on Earth

 

After a two week hiatus from opera, I decided to return by going back to the beginning - or about as close as we can, so was delighted to discover a new production from Garsington Opera at Wormsley of Monteverdi's earliest surviving opera available on Operavision.

To call John Caird and Robert Jones' production "stunning" is an understatement.  The entirety of this "'Orfeo" is the very definition of gesamtkunstwerk and is one of the most perfect, most beautiful things I've ever seen on the screen.  I can only imagine the effect in the house must have been even more dazzling.  The visual elements are matched musically by the perfect period playing of Laurence Cummings and the English Concert.  The entirety is a joy to behold. 

One does not automatically think of gesamtkunstwerk or Wagner when considering early opera - or Italian opera generally, but Monteverdi's exquisite narrative flows seamlessly from scene-to-scene and moment-to-moment with a similarity that evokes Wagner in the very best zum raum wird heir die zeit (here time becomes space) manner.  

The Wormsley stage is surrounded by the orchestra with a magnificent playing area, transforming the bucolic countryside of Thrace into a sort of cross between the Elysian Fields and a jungle, leaves and vines and lush green grasses, all dominated by a floating ring serving as an important visual element throughout.  

Eschewing period-costumes, Mr. Jones has clad the entire company - orchestra, soloists, chorus and dancers - in era-defying frocks, trousers, and vests in whites and beiges, every one of them barefoot.  Each member of the company here is an integral link of the storytelling, dancing, singing, playing and moving across the space with a graceful fluidity so perfectly and beautifully wed to the score, it frequently took my breath away.

Aside from being beautiful to look at, the musical elements of this opera have rarely - in my experience at least (and I've heard and seen a lot of Orfei) been matched.  The closest experience I can think of is Trish Brown's equally brilliant (but wildly different) production for Simon Keenlyside.  Right now, I'm prone to calling this one "even better."  

The first 30 minutes of Orfeo may be among the most joyous in all of opera, remnding me again of Wagner and the final pages of Meistersinger, despite the entirely opposite sound worlds each composer creates and inhabits.

The heart and soul of every Orfeo is its hero, and in Ed Lyon, Garsington has produced one of the greatest I've seen.  Lyon has every Baroque vocal trick and tic in a formidable arsenal and his musicality is unempeachable.  Add to this the fact he is an actor of tremendous range, moves with a dancer's athleticism and you have a performance that is genuinely a tour de force, and goes straight to the heart.  After learning the tragic news of Eurydice, Lyon follows the narrative, "so grief stricken he cannot express his grief."  He kneels there for what seems an eternity, eyes staring out at us, unblinking and in disbelief as he imagines the horror of his beloved's demise.   

Another miracle of this production is the lighting design of Paul Pyant. The stunning light-filled ambiance of Act I does a 180 degree change in the dark, black, red, fiery dismal world of Hades, with Jones' costumes their physical match.  The boatman Caronte/Charon's vessel is made up of three woman surrounding him and the effect is disturbingly glorious. Frazer Scott's basso reaches the depths of the role and his being overtaken by Orfeo who begins his journey is pure magic.  

I could go on (and on) but suffice it to say, every element of this exquisite show is on the same level as what I've already described and the opera's brief two hours pass as if in a dream.  Diana Montague, Claire Lees, Laura Fleur, Zoe Drummond, Ossian Huskinsan, Lauren Joyann Morris and the rest of the singers, players and dancers each help create this beautiful world we are lucky to witness.

The rapturous ovation is broken, with a nice touch: the singers turning their backs to the audience and kneeling before the orchestra as the players take their applause. Then a moment of silence as the singers, standing in a single line, quietly break into an otherworldly performance of Monteverdi's gorgeous madrigral Che dar più vi poss’io.  I cannot think of a more fitting way to end a perfect evening.  

The Full Monteverdi: Where Love Comes to Die

Where love comes to die.

Several years ago I attempted to watch this film and, truth be told, couldn't make it through the first madrigal, and I adore Monteverdi. This morning, bored and with time on my hands, I decided to give it another shot, and my reaction could not have been any more different to my original. I was, in a word, overwhelmed. I've had a lifelong love of all things Monteverdi and the madrigal books were amongst the first works of his I fell for. Hard. The idea of setting Monteverdi's Fourth Book of Madrigals to a lip-synched film of 21st century couples breaking up in a posh London restaurant, well somehow it just didn't feel right. This time through however, I got exactly what director John La Bouchardiere must have felt when he thought this to be a great idea for a film.

While it isn't necessary to have visualizations for Monteverdi's grand excursion into love and loss to make their point - the music and word settings have for centuries made their points beautifully sans pictures, La Bouchardiere achieves something beautiful, managing to capture the heartbreak of love in sharing the emotional separation of these couples, all occuring simultaneously in a single night.

Through the use of shifting cameras, lighting, filters and various techniques, often in cineme verite) style, along with brief flashback sequences, we see the couples at their most vulnerable, high and low, loving and losing: camping trips, christenings, post love making (discretely, no nudity here) sense both their feelings of elation and doom. All of this somehow gracefully compliments Monteverdi's difficult, stunning harmonizations and beautifully complex polyphony. The richness of the madrigals lays wide open the naked emotions with a brutal power which LaBouchardiere captures with a sure and natural sense of timing, knowing. He knows where to place, move, and leave his cameras, when to cut to a flashback, where to allow reaction shots all flowing in seamless rhythm with this amazing music.

The vocal ensemble I Fagiolini, paired with silent actors make up the entire cast, holding the story together as though their lives depended upon it. I Fagiolini approach Monteverdi powerfully, often in full voice as opposed to the delicacy so frequently heard in this music from other early music ensembles. The result is an often thrilling, sometimes raw soundscape of theatricality, both original and unique in early music. The sighing quality so necessary in Monteverdi is not eliminated by this approach but rather highlights that quality through the use of more complex dynamics and shadings with which I Faiolini imbues the score. It's rather marvelous.

I can imagine many will feel the same as I when first trying to watch this, but, you've got an hour and can open your heart to some of the most exquisite music ever written as the "script" for an oddly beautiful film, I strongly recommend this gem of a movie.