Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 11, 2008|Volume 36, Number 25

Composer Claudio Monteverdi’s works
focus of concerts, conference

The Yale Baroque Opera Project (YBOP) will present two performances of the opera “Orfeo” by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) on Friday, April 18, at 5:15 p.m., and on Saturday, April 19, at 2 p.m.

The performances, which are free and open to the public, will take place in Trinity Lutheran Church, on the corner of Wall and Orange streets. Reservations and tickets are not required; doors will open 30 minutes before each performance. The opera will run approximately two hours.

Based on the classical myth of Orpheus, Monteverdi’s masterpiece “Orfeo” is considered by many to be the first important opera ever composed. Monteverdi wrote the opera in 1607, six years after two other operatic treatments of the same myth by Giulio Caccini (c.1550-1610) and Jacopo Peri (1561-1633).

The story concerns the mythological demigod Orfeo, who attempts to reclaim his bride Euridice from the underworld through the magical power of his musical and poetic skills. Unable to resist taking a prohibited glance at her as he leads her back to the world of the living, he loses her forever.

Twenty-five costumed singers will join the Yale Collegium Players, an orchestra featuring strings, harp, organ, harpsichord and lute as well as such early instruments as the theorbo, cornetti and sackbuts. The singers are enrolled in a course taught by Professor Richard Lalli, while the musicians include professional early music players, as well as students enrolled in courses taught by Yale faculty members Robert Mealy and Ilya Poletaev. A recent Yale College graduate, Ethan Heard, is director of the production.

This performance of Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” is a centerpiece of the conference “Looking Back/Looking Forward,” being presented in conjunction with the World Performance Project and the Whitney Humanities Center. Other conference events include lectures and a performance of “Project O,” a re-telling of the Orpheus myth using American musical and dance traditions of the 1950s and 1960s and directed by Professor Joseph Roach.

For more information about the conference, visit www.yale.edu/wpp.

This is the second major production of YBOP. The first, a choreographed performance of Monteverdi’s madrigals, was presented in Sprague Hall in November 2007 to critical acclaim.

The Yale Baroque Opera Project is funded by a Distinguished Achievement Award granted by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Ellen Rosand, the George A. Saden Professor of Music in the Department of Music. Rosand’s “Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre” has been recently released in paperback and her book “Monteverdi’s Last Operas” was published in late 2007. During each semester of this and the coming two years, YBOP will present Yale undergraduates in performances of 17th-century Italian opera. For more information, visit www.yale.edu/ybop.

Another major work by Monteverdi, contemporary with “Orfeo,” the “Vespers of the Virgin Mary” (1610), will be presented on Friday, April 25, and Sunday, April 27, by Yale Schola Cantorum under the direction of Simon Carrington and featuring the Yale Collegium Players, directed by Robert Mealy. Both performances are also free and open to the public. The work will be performed in New Haven on Friday, April 25 at 8 p.m. in Woolsey Hall (corner College and Grove), and in New York City at St. Michael's Church on Sunday, April 27 at 8 p.m. For more information, see www.yale.edu/schola/events.htm.

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