Landi wrote two operas, this and the later Sant'Alessio, which I'd actually already seen and then didn't write about for inexplicable reasons. I guess I wasn't a huge fan, mainly because the story just seems perverse: it's about a fifth-century saint who comes home to his family in disguise as a beggar (they don't know where he is or even if he's alive) and lives like that for like twenty years, and then a guy appears and says, dude, this is a bad idea; reveal yourself to your family and to your grieving wife, fercrissake; live your life. This seems like exactly the advice he should be given--only that guy's the Devil. Angels appear to encourage him to keep doing what he's doing until he dies, which he does, and it's all triumphant. The sensibility behind this is so alien I can't even begin to wrap my brain around it (though it does feature some amusing comic-relief servants). Interesting to note that it was written by one Giulio Rospigliosi, the future Pope Clement IX. He actually wrote a lot of libretti, including--per wikipedia--one while he was Pope. According to his wikipedia page, he was a legit good guy and Pope, cutting against stereotypes about corrupt Renaissance Popes (and Medieval Popes. And modern Popes. I guess I should've just said "Popes," huh?). Of course, that could just be Catholic propaganda. How would we possibly know?
Anyway, now I guess I've said all I wanted to say about Sant'Alessio, so that's good. But this is very different. While Orpheus narratives are usually about his effort to rescue Eurydice from Hades, this--as you'd guess--treats of his later life. Did you know Orpheus was a demigod? Well, he was. His mother was the Muse Calliope. That's, I guess, why the gods are interested in him. So he's having a birthday party, and all of them are invited! Whoo! Except for Bacchus, on account of he's renounced women and wine (though not song, obviously). This angers the god, who sends his maenads to tear him apart, to the grief of his mother, to whom the news is broken by her other son Fileno. Orpheus' shade ends up in Hades; he's invited to Heaven, on account of he's a demigod, but he wants to see Eurydice again. Unfortunately, having drunk from the river Lethe, she doesn't remember him and doesn't want to know him. This bums him out, but Charon encourages him to drink from it himself, which he does and then goes up to Heaven to be a god. The end.
I must say, that part with Eurydice is a bit harsh: if you can't be reunited with your lover even in death, where can you? Nonetheless, I liked this a lot--far more than Sant'Alessio. A lot of madrigals and choruses, and even some early flirtation with arias, as in a weirdly catchy number where Charon's talking up the awesomeness of the river Lethe. The production is by Pierre Audi--why do I keep running into this guy lately?--and I like it a lot better than anything previous I'd seen by him: a very attractive and accessible art-deco-ish kind of thing. Most of the singers take multiple roles, as--I guess--it would have been at the time. So this is a winner, and here's another important point: it's my first opera from the 1610s. Why is that an important point? Because I'm an absolute maniac, is why. Which would make it my second-oldest opera total, unless you count those intermedi, which you shouldn't, but which I kind of do anyway.
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