Les Talens Lyriques Rousset - Morte D'orfeo - BLU-RAY

Stefano Landi was an influential early opera composer, and La morte d'Orfeo is regarded as a milestone in the development of the genre. The narrative starts where Monteverdi's L'Orfeo ends, taking us through the remaining adventures of Orpheus in the underworld. Beaten to death and torn apart by the fearsome maenads, Orpheus survives as a wandering soul and is finally reincarnated as a star in the sky. Landi succeeded in turning Greek tragedy into timeless music-drama, the starting point of all opera, and Seen and Heard International declared that it had 'never before encountered such technical perfection' in Pierre Audi's Amsterdam production.

Opera was in it's infancy when Monteverdi wrote L'Orfeo, only six years after the first example of a drama set wholly to music had been performed in Florence. He brought to the work a revolutionary synthesis of text, staging and musical architectural that virtually defined the future of opera. John Eliot Gardiner first conducted L'Orfeo at the Proms in London in 1967. For decades he has been at the forefront of Monteverdi performance and scholarship and in 2017, the 450th anniversary of Monteverdi's birth, and the 50th anniversary of his own first performance of the opera, he undertook the crowning achievement of his association with the composer, an odyssey to perform all three surviving full-length operas. This performance of L'Orfeo was given at the historic Teatro La Fenice in Venice - which has seen triumphant premieres of works by Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and many others - in a critically acclaimed semi-staged production.

One of opera's most beautiful masterpieces, Gluck's exquisite drama introduces us to Orpheus, the poet and musician whose every word and note communicate the most overwhelming love for his Eurydice. Lyric presents Orphée et Eurydice in the Paris version, which contains thrilling ballet sequences that will come to vivid life under the direction and choreography of the legendary John Neumeier. Lyric's production stars Dmitry Korchak as Orphée with Andriana Chuchman as Eurydice and Lauren Snouffer as Amour. The Chicago Tribune deemed the production InchtriumphantInch and Inchmiraculously fresh and alive.Inch The production features Gluck's reworking of the original German opera into a French-language production featuring ballet. InchTo hear [Gluck's] songful art pour out uninterrupted...[is] to understand the overwhelming power of melody.Inch (New York Times)