ORPHEO and EURIDICE

for inspiration listen to music by:

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi 1607

Orpheo tu dormi (right click and open in a new tab)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fdQWpiKwzA&feature=related

Act 1

Reveals a pastoral scene. Orfeo and Euridice enter together with a chorus of nymphs and shepherds, . A shepherd announces that this is the couple's wedding day; the chorus responds, first in a stately invocation ("Come, Hymen, O come") and then in a joyful dance ("Leave the mountains, leave the fountains"). Orfeo and Euridice sing of their love for each other, before leaving with most of the group for the wedding ceremony in the temple. Those left on stage sing a brief chorus, commenting on how Orfeo has been changed by love from one "for whom sighs were food and weeping was drink" to a state of sublime happiness.

Act 2

Orfeo returns with the main chorus, and sings with them of the beauties of nature. Orfeo then muses on his former unhappiness, but proclaims: "After grief one is more content, after pain one is happier". The mood of contentment is abruptly ended when La messaggera enters, bringing the news that, while gathering flowers, Euridice has received a fatal snakebite. The chorus expresses its anguish: "Ah, bitter happening, ah, impious and cruel fate!", while the Messaggera castigates herself as the bearing of bad tidings ("For ever I will flee, and in a lonely cavern lead a life in keeping with my sorrow"). Orfeo, after venting his grief and incredulity ("Thou art dead, my life, and I am breathing?"), declares his intention of descending to the Underworld and persuading its ruler to allow Euridice to return to life. Otherwise "I shall remain with thee in the company of death". He departs, and the chorus resumes its lament.

Act 3

Orfeo is guided by Speranza to the gates of Hades. Having pointed out the words inscribed on the gate ("Abandon hope, all ye who enter here") Speranza leaves. Orfeo is now confronted with the ferryman Charon, who addresses Orfeo harshly and refuses to take him across the River Styx. Orfeo attempts to persuade Charon by singing a flattering song to him ("Mighty spirit and powerful divinity"), but the ferryman is unmoved. However, when Orfeo takes up his lyre and plays, Charon is soothed into sleep. Seizing his chance, Orfeo steals the ferryman's boat and crosses the river, to enter the Underworld while a chorus of spirits reflects that nature cannot defend herself against man: "He has tamed the sea with fragile wood, and disdained the rage of the winds."

Act 4

In the Underworld Proserpina, Queen of Hades, who has been deeply affected by Orfeo's singing, petitions King Plutoe, her husband, for Euridice's release. Moved by her pleas, Plutone agrees subject to the condition that, as he leads Euridice towards the world, Orfeo must not look back. If he does, "a single glance will condemn him to eternal loss". Orfeo enters, leading Euridice and singing confidently that on that day he will rest on his wife's white bosom. But as he sings a note of doubt creeps in: "Who will assure me that she is following?". Perhaps Plutone, driven by envy, has imposed the condition through spite? Suddenly distracted by an off-stage commotion, Orfeo looks round; immediately, the image of Euridice begins to fade. She sings, despairingly: "Losest thou me through too much love?" and disappears. Orfeo attempts to follow her but is drawn away by an unseen force. The chorus of spirits sings that Orfeo, having overcome Hades, was in turn overcome by his passions.

Act 5

Back in the fields of Thrace Orfeo, in a long soliloquy, laments his loss, praises Euridice's beauty and resolves that his heart will never again be pierced by Cupid's arrow. Orfeo's soliloquy is interrupted by a chorus of maenads or Bacchantes—wild, drunken women—who sing of the "divine fury" of their master, the god Bacchus The cause of their wrath is Orfeo and his renunciation of women; he will not escape their heavenly anger, and the longer he evades them the more severe his fate will be. Orfeo leaves the scene and his destiny is left uncertain,for the Bacchantes devote themselves for the rest of the opera to wild singing and dancing in praise of Bacchus in which Orfeo is killed and dismembered by deranged Bacchantes or Maenades.

The forest nymphs discover his dismembered body and Lyre.