Opera

L’Orfeo

Claudio Monteverdi

Orpheus sings to vanquish death, hoping to save his dead wife from the underworld. And so it is entirely fitting that the history of opera should begin with a work celebrating the power of music.

Favola in musica in one prologue and five acts
Libretto by Alessandro Striggio

Performed in Italian with German and English supertitles

Premiere
30. April 2023

Dates & Cast

26
Sun
May 2024
7.30 pm
Price category H
Event is in the past
7.30 pm – 9.40 pm
One intermission
Venue
Semperoper Dresden
Free introductory talk
held in the Semper Opera House cellar 45 minutes before curtain-up

lautten compagney BERLIN

Project Partners: Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe Sachsen, Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden, Sparkassen-Versicherung Sachsen, LBBW

31
Fri
May 2024
7 pm
Price category I
Event is in the past
7 pm – 9.10 pm
One intermission
Venue
Semperoper Dresden
Free introductory talk
held in the Semper Opera House cellar 45 minutes before curtain-up

lautten compagney BERLIN

Project Partners: Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe Sachsen, Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden, Sparkassen-Versicherung Sachsen, LBBW

03
Mon
June 2024
7 pm
Price category H
Event is in the past
7 pm – 9.10 pm
One intermission
Venue
Semperoper Dresden
Free introductory talk
held in the Semper Opera House cellar 45 minutes before curtain-up

lautten compagney BERLIN

Project Partners: Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe Sachsen, Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden, Sparkassen-Versicherung Sachsen, LBBW

06
Thu
June 2024
7 pm
Price category H
Event is in the past
7 pm – 9.10 pm
One intermission
Venue
Semperoper Dresden
Free introductory talk
held in the Semper Opera House cellar 45 minutes before curtain-up

lautten compagney BERLIN

Project Partners: Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe Sachsen, Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden, Sparkassen-Versicherung Sachsen, LBBW

In brief

Orpheus sings to vanquish death, hoping to save his dead wife from the underworld. And so it is entirely fitting that the history of opera should begin with a work celebrating the power of music. The premiere of Claudio Monteverdi’s »L’Orfeo« on 24 February 1607 is regarded as the birth of musical theatre. In the Semperoper, Monteverdi’s opera about the power and impotence of music can now be experienced for the first time in a new production of the original version. The conductor and lutenist Wolfgang Katschner will bring the score to life together with his orchestra lautten compagney BERLIN with period instruments. Director and puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan, a shooting star of the Austrian theatre scene, will stage the work with a mixture of singing actors and life-size puppets.

Storyline

The music tells the story of the renowned singer Orpheus, with the goal of giving people courage and hope. Orpheus and Eurydice are going to celebrate their wedding together with shepherds and nymphs. While Orpheus is still singing of his good fortune, a messenger informs him that Eurydice has died from a snake bite. Orpheus decides to descend to the underworld in order to win Eurydice back, or else to die himself. Hope accompanies Orpheus up to the banks of the river Styx, which encircles the underworld. He is unable to persuade the ferryman Charon to take him to the other shore. But when Charon falls asleep, he crosses into the realm of shadows by himself. While a chorus of spirits cheers Orpheus on, Persephone and Pluto, the royal couple of the underworld, argue. Orpheus laments his sorrow and asks the gods of the underworld to return Eurydice to him. Persephone, moved by Orpheus’s singing, convinces her husband to grant the singer’s request. Pluto, however, sets one condition: Orpheus must not look at Eurydice on their way back to the realm of the living. But Orpheus fails: walking in front of Eurydice, he looks back – and loses his beloved forever. Back on earth, Orpheus laments his fate, but he is answered only by Echo. Apollo, the god of the arts and Orpheus’s father, reminds him of the transience of happiness and sorrow on earth and takes his son with him up to heaven.

Explore

Making-of

L’Orfeo – Making-of (1)

Director and puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan stages the baroque opera L’Orfeo–an opera that is more than 400 years old, based on a story that is more than 2,000 years old and is about nothing less than life and death. For Nikolaus Habjan, puppet theater is the form of theater that comes closest to depicting life and death: with puppets, he can portray life and death more truthfully.

L’Orfeo – Making-of (2)

In Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo the poet Orpheus wants to bring back his beloved wife Euridice from the underworld. The decisive question for set designer Jakob Brossmann is therefore how to represent the upper world and underworld on the opera stage. For Nikolaus Habjan’s new staging of L’Orfeo, Jakob Brossmann has designed an olive tree as the main element, which takes root in the underworld and grows into the upper world, bringing life back from death as a symbol of nature.
Making-of

L’Orfeo – Making-of (3)

One sound for the upper world and one sound for the lower world, five trombones, strings rich in overtones, cornetts, recorders and a baroque harp with three parallel string levels – in the latest making-of, Wolfgang Katschner, musical director of the lautten compagney BERLIN, and harpist Johanna Seitz introduce the basic features of the period instruments the orchestra will play during our performance series of L’Orfeo .
Trailer

L’Orfeo

Orpheus sings to vanquish death, hoping to save his dead wife from the underworld. And so it is entirely fitting that the history of opera should begin with a work celebrating the power of music. The premiere of Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo on 24 February 1607 is regarded as the birth of musical theatre. In the Semperoper, Monteverdi’s opera about the power and impotence of music can now be experienced for the first time in a new production of the original version. The conductor and lutenist Wolfgang Katschner will bring the score to life together with his orchestra lautten compagney BERLIN with period instruments. Director and puppeteer Nikolaus Habjan, a shooting star of the Austrian theatre scene, will stage the work with a mixture of singing actors and life-size puppets.
Gallery

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