Libretto Alessandro Striggio, upon an ancient-Greek myth
Premiere: June 13, 2008
The first opera? This generally accepted statement for Monteverdi’s Orpheus is corroborated by the fact that the date of its opening night in 1607 marked the beginning of a new century and the beginning of a new era in music, which corresponds perfectly with the beginning of the 21st century. At the end (or the beginning?) of opera’s historical path, we can ask ourselves what opera is. What do Orpheus, Don Giovanni, Wotan and Wozzeck have in common? The form? The drama? When we look at them separately, they have absolutely nothing in common, but observed together, they certainly do.
Orpheus has proved very suitable for musical and dramatic revolutions: Peri, Monteverdi, Gluck... Offenbach? The timelessness of the theme should not surprise us, because Orpheus epitomizes the very essence of opera: the poetry and the music, the divine and the human, the resolution and the incertainty, the happiness and the despair interveave in the myth about the halfgod (Apollo’s son) who conflicts with the underworld in order to rescue the woman he loves. Like Orpheus, Monteverdi has, free of fear and dogma, taken an unknown path, with the desire to create a new artistic form. He has managed to create a wonderfully balanced work which reflects the ideas of the Neoplatonism of the 15th and the 16th century, and harmonizes the Greek thought
with the Christian theology. After full 400 years, this is the first staging of Orpheus in Zagreb.
