I've seen plenty of pairs of different operas with the same name, but this is my first hat trick. Also, I really like that the composers names--Monteverdi, Rossi, Sartorio--are simultaneously in chronological and alphabetical order. This production just happened to appear on Operaonvideo, so I decided to try my chances with an auto-translated libretto.
Well, like Rossi's opera, this prominently features Aristeo as an unwelcome rival for Eurydice's love. There's also a women, Autonoe, Aristeo's former lover whom he's abandoned (a classic opera trope), pursuing him. Orfeo gets jealous, but then Eurydice does the usual thing where she gets bitten by a snake and dies, so he goes to Hades and yadda yadda. Aristeo returns to Autonoe. Also, for some reason Ercole and Achilles are involved. Also Esculapio (Aesculapius). Oh, and Erinda, a skirt-role nurse. Is she a horny skirt-role nurse? Oh you had better fucking believe she is!
Well, unfortunately, I can't give as thorough an accounting of the plot I might like, due to the limitations of auto-translate and--perhaps more to the point here--because this production, I realized, is pretty substantially chopped down, making it even harder to follow along with. Which is all quite a shame, because musically, I thought this was pretty darned great. There are indeed arias here, and some excellent ones at that. I can't even begin to compare the different Orfeos I've seen, but this at least holds its own with the others. I wasn't a huge fan of Erinda's horrendously annoying "comic" singing, but hey. If only the whole thing didn't sort of collapse into an incoherent jumble (not the opera itself's fault...probably), it would've been a great operatic experience; as it stands, it was at least a great musical one.
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