Orfeo

by Ferdinando Bertoni (1725-18130).
Azione teatrale in tre atti by Ranieri de'Calzabigi First performance in Venice in 1776.

When Bertoni began setting Calzabigi's Orfeo ed Euridice to music, he was aware how successful the same libretto had been when set by Gluck only a few years before. Not surprising, Bertoni was vilified as an incompetent imitator at best and a plagiarist at worst. Nevertheless, Bertoni's opera enjoyed success and proved the critics wrong. The first modern production of Orfeo took place in 1991 in Padua. According to Claudio Scimone it was Marilyn Horne who attracted the musical world's attention to Bertoni's opera, by inserting Bertoni's arias into Gluck's Orfeo.

Orfeo is the hero of a very ancient Geek myth offering an ideal plot for an opera libretto. In fact over fifty operas have been written on this story.

Orfeo was a poet and musician who accompanied the Argonauts on their expeditions. He was married to Euridice, a nymph. But misfortune caused her to die very young after being bitten by a snake as she fled across country from an attempted rape, and this is where the opera begins.

ACT 1

The curtain rises on a cypress grove, where Orfeo mourns the death of his wife Euridice with a crowd of shepherds and nymphs who adorn her tomb with garlands of flowers. Soon Orfeo asks to be left alone. And, once alone, he sings, a plaintive song regretting the premature loss of his wife, cursing the cruel gods of Hades.

At this point Imeneo, the god of marriage, appears and announces that Jupiter himself has been moved to pity for Orfeo and has decided to allow him to descend to Hades to reclaim his wife, if he can appease the Furies and the monsters of the Underworld with the sweet sound of his lyre. But he can have her back on one condition: that he does not cast a glance on her until they are safely returned to earth. Orfeo accepts the condition and prepares to face the horrors of Hades.

ACT 2

The second act takes place in the Underworld. At first we are in a gloomy cavern beyond the river Cocito. As Orfeo, a mortal, appears, the Furies are thrown into frenzy. His pleading is answered by a frightening No! Which interrupts him again and again. However, even the Furies are eventually placated by the power of music and song.

Orfeo is thus allowed to enter the Elysian Fields, where Eurydice is singing and dancing happily among other blessed spirits. Orfeo is quite won over by the beauty of the place, but declares that even there he could not experience perfect happiness without his beloved. The blessed spirits encourage Euridice to return to Orfeo who can make her happier than Elysium itself. Without looking at her, Orfeo leads her quickly away.

ACT 3

As the curtain rises we are in a mountainous gorge, still within the Underworld. Orfeo is leading Euridice by the hand, but she is reluctant to follow him. He tells her that she is alive again and en¬courages her to make haste, but she is bewildered and annoyed by his refusal to explain how it all happened, and especially by the fact that instead of hugging her, he keeps his gaze turned away from her. She hesitates to leave a happy place like Elysium to return to earthly cares with an unloving husband.

As to Orfeo, his plight is unbearable: he longs to hold her in his arms and comfort her but finally the inevitable happens: he cannot bear to hear her reproaches and turns to look at her. She feels faint and falls lifeless to the ground.

Oreo's grief is now expressed in the well- known aria "Che farò senza Euridice" (What shall I do without Euridice?). He is about to commit suicide but his desperation provokes the sudden appearance of Imeneo, who announces that Orfeo has suffered enough in the cause of love and finally restores Euridice to her devoted husband. They sing a triumphant trio.

The scene changes to the temple of the god of love, back on Earth, and the opera ends in general jubilation in honour of the happy pair.

The original myth does not have a happy ending, which Calzabigi added because it was mandatory during the Baroque and Neo-classical Era. In the original myth Orfeo made a desperate bid to return to the Underworld to bring Euridice back a second time, but Charon, the Guardian of Hades, refused to let him pass. The hero returned to Thrace, where his he abjured the love of woman, and, like Jupiter and Apollo, proposed to take on a male lover. The female followers of Bacchus, enraged by his homosexual proposals, and in the grips of homicidal frenzy produced by their mystical union with their god, tear him to pieces.