La morte d'Orfeo is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in five acts by the Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 composer Stefano Landi

Stefano Landi

Stefano Landi was an Italian composer and teacher of the early Baroque Roman School. He was an influential early composer of opera, and wrote the earliest opera on a historical subject: Sant'Alessio .-Biography:Landi was born in Rome, the capital of the Papal States.In 1595 he joined the Collegio...

. It was first performed in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 in 1619. The work is styled a tragicomedia pastorale (pastoral tragicomedy). The libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

, which may be by the composer himself, is inspired by La favola d'Orfeo (1484) by Angelo Poliziano. Unlike Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, Landi's opera contains comic elements.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, (Conductor:)
Orfeo (Orpheus Orpheus Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who... )	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Teti (Thetis Thetis Silver-footed Thetis , disposer or "placer" , is encountered in Greek mythology mostly as a sea nymph or known as the goddess of water, one of the fifty Nereids, daughters of the ancient one of the seas with shape-shifting abilities who survives in the historical vestiges of most later Greek myths... )	alto Alto Alto is a musical term, derived from the Latin word altus, meaning "high" in Italian, that has several possible interpretations.When designating instruments, "alto" frequently refers to a member of an instrumental family that has the second highest range, below that of the treble or soprano. Hence,...
Destiny	bass
L'ebro (Hebrus)	bass
Aurora	alto
Mercurio (Mercury Mercury (mythology) Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces... )	tenor
Apolline	tenor
Bacco (Dionysus Dionysus Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete... )	alto
Nisa	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Ireno	tenor
Lincastro	alto
Il furore	bass
Calliope	alto
Fileno	tenor
Caronte (Charon Charon (mythology) In Greek mythology, Charon or Kharon is the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on... )	bass
Euridice (Eurydice Eurydice Eurydice in Greek mythology, was an oak nymph or one of the daughters of Apollo . She was the wife of Orpheus, who loved her dearly; on their wedding day, he played joyful songs as his bride danced through the meadow. One day, a satyr saw and pursued Eurydice, who stepped on a venomous snake,... )	soprano
Giove (Jupiter Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,... )	bass
Fosforo	alto

Synopsis

After Orpheus has failed to save his wife Eurydice from the underworld, he renounces wine and the love of women. This offends the god Bacchus who urges his female followers, the Maenad

Maenad

In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus , the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones"...

s, to kill Orpheus. The enraged Maenads tear him apart. The gods want the dead Orpheus to join them on Olympus

Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, about 100 kilometres away from Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks. The highest peak Mytikas, meaning "nose", rises to 2,917 metres...

 but Orpheus wants to be reunited with Eurydice in Hades

Hades

Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...

. Only after the god Mercury shows him that, having drunk the waters of Lethe

Lethe

In Greek mythology, Lethe was one of the five rivers of Hades. Also known as the Ameles potamos , the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the Underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness...

, Eurydice no longer remembers her husband, does Orpheus agree to ascend to Olympus.

Recordings

• La morte d'Orfeo Elwes, Koslowski, Cordier, van der Kamp, Tragicomedia, conducted by Stephen Stubbs (Accent, 1987)
• La morte d'Orfeo Auvity, Laurens, Visse, van Elsacker, Guillon, Bucher, Akadêmia, conducted by Françoise Lasserre (Zig Zag Territoires, 2007)

Sources

• The Viking Opera Guide ed. Holden (Viking, 1993)
• Del Teatro (in Italian)
• Le magazine de l'opera baroque by Jean-Claude Brenac (in French)
• The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera ed. Parker (OUP, 1994)