Pre-Opera Talk | Monteverdi's Orfeo

BEMF Orchestra Director Robert Mealy speaks with celebrated scholar and author Thomas Forrest Kelly, Morton B. Knafel Research Professor of Music at Harvard University, about Monteverdi's Orfeo. Join them for a tour of the palace of the Duke of Mantua-where Orfeo was first performed-and a discussion of the intricate beauty of this piece from the earliest days of opera as an art form.
Over Thanksgiving Weekend 2020, BEMF presented "Looking Back at Orpheus" with free, limited-time broadcasts featuring our June 2015 production of Monteverdi's Orfeo, our November 2011 production of Charpentier's La Descente d'Orphée aux Enfers, and 2 weeks of new videos. Learn more at bemf.org/conce...

[@geckofeet]

An interesting and informative talk; many thanks to Robert Mealy and Thomas Forrest Kelly. One small reservation: it may not be quite fair to say that Monteverdi et al. thought they were recreating Classical drama. Rather, they wanted to use the techniques of Classic drama, adapted to the Italian language, in order to recreate the *effect* of Classical drama. They wanted to "move the audience to pity." Those of us fortunate enough to see the performance in Jordan Hall will remember that when Orfeo turned around to see if Euridice was following, the audience gasped. In other words - it worked.

[@abraham9305]

Leitmotif baby

[@micahdowdy]

Why are you in this comment section

[@abraham9305]

@@micahdowdy you are one to talk bucko