How L'Orfeo Changed Opera Forever
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2024
- Contrary to popular belief, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo wasn't actually the first ever opera. So what did l'Orfeo do differently, and why has it become recognised as such an important landmark piece, as the origin of 'true' opera?
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Script by: Yan Xing Lee
Narrated by: Oscar Osicki
0:00 - Introduction
1:00 - Monteverdi's Background
1:40 - Humanism
2:27 - Music and Humanism
3:14 - Seconda Practica
3:40 - The Genres that Led to Opera
5:00 - L'Orfeo
7:23 - Word Painting
10:16 - How L'Orfeo Changed the Game
Another reason L'Orfeo is often considered the first opera is because it's the earliest opera still performed today.
Long gone are the days when BBC2 could create and stage a version of the 1589 Intermedi "La Pellegrina".
Jordi Savall is a damn genius interpretting Renaissance music. His L'Orfeo on YT is the best thing ever. My favorite parts: Tocatta and Ritornello (of course), Lasciate i monti, Vi ricorda boschio ombrosi, to name a few.
I do like the toccata and Jordi Savall's entrance into the theatre.
There's a 1978 Nicholas Harnoncourt Orfeo on TH-cam, absolutely worth a watch
The entrance of the conductor is spine tingling. A veritable coup de théâtre.
Yes it is!
Monteverdi's work has the feeling of the beginning of something, when forms were not yet codified and rigid, expectations were nebulous and freedom everywhere.
Monteverdi is certainly a fascinating composer, a giant of Western musical development and key in the exciting emergence of the early baroque style. He was a transitional composer, and he was very aware of this indeed!
"Underworld is portrayed by heavy brass" Shows a part with a regal.
I am a professional opera singer and teacher. I want to sincerely thank you for making this. It was a pleasure to watch this but also the information that you share is vital to this art-form which I love and live myself.
8:09 This is NOT a diminished chord but simply an appoggiatura on the leading tone (G#) of the a minor chord in the continuo.
Definitely word painting, though
Thank-you!
Agreed
hahaha so glad I saw this, I was beginning to think I was crazy 😂😂
Claudio Monteverdi was the DW Griffiths of opera, presenting an already existing form in a fundamentally original way!
Monteverdi's operas were important at least in part because he was one of the greatest composers in western music.
Merci beaucoup for putting your passion into these videos.
The Toccata banged so crazy that Monteverdi used it for his Vespra beata virgina
excellent history of one of the most little discussed uses for music
9:45 Curiously this so called diminished forth f#-bb (f-sharp - b-flat) sounds like a sweet major third right in ET (Monteverdi certainly would have used a temperament that allowed him to access all keys), but is probably the *choice of non diatonic notes rather than the size of the interval that really creates the dissonant effect*
I enjoyed. However, for what it's worth, I was never taught that L'Orfeo was the first opera, but rather that it was the first *great* opera.
Anybody who's studied opera knows Monteverdi didn't invent opera, but that he created the first great one.
L’orfeo will always remain as one of my favorite operas
It would be interesting to compare Orfeo and Ulisse, separated by time, style, technique and place. Monteverdi evolutioned up to a point that everything else in Opera was just a note to his masterpieces Orfeo, Ulisse and Poppaea.
EXCELLENT. Content and visual style both clear and accurate. Thankyou
Funny how people talk about "Art of the Renaissance" and "Music of the Renaissance" as if the timelines were roughly symmetrical. In fact, the so-called "Renaissance Period in Art" was well over by the time of Monteverdi's Orfeo in 1607.
They really don't seem to have the right dates. They also claim, around 1600 humanism was emerging 🤦🏻♂️. Ignoring it first was mentioned by Francesco Petrarca, who died in 1374...
Does anybody know what he says at 5:54? The transcript says 'kitaroni' but I haven't been able to find anything on that (just Instagram hashtags lol).
This was terrific! Learded a great deal. Carole paul Trombonist
Everybody who's really studied music knows about Dafne and Euridice.
And also that L’Orfeo is a much better work…
We learned that in elementary school.
True
Why are most of the picturs irrelevant to what is being said ? Were they bought as a job lot ?
Emilio de Cavalieri's "Rappresentatione de Anima, et di Corpo" is a sacred opera in a spoken prologue and fully sung three acts. Being performed in February 1600, it is actually the earliest surviving work. That aside, great video, sir!
Could you please do a "why listen to Bruckner" video? I keep coming back to him, but I cannot find many good reasons to get serious about his music, but I would like to!
Sir Mahler, your music is way better than Bruckner's in my opinion.
uma dúvida: e "la serva padrona"? não é anterior?
i'm entering the opera realm just now because of violin practise. tell me something: the opera "orfeu et euridice", from Gluck, is important?
curious there's separate operas called orfeu and another called euridice.. are those related to "orfeu et euridice"?
Of course they are.
It has been common practice to perform stories from classical mythology on stage in various interpretations ever since the times of Sophokles.
Diego Zirih :: Once you become more and more familiar with opera and its history ... you'll see that famous librettists' (Mestastasio) wrote librettos with similar story-lines. Different composers would adapt the same libretto to _their_ version of a famous opera libretto. Mestastasio was one of the most prolific librettists. Many composers were thankful for his imaginative creativity. His librettos were already _there ;_ they just needed a librettists to make sure the storyline was coherent ... because the opera (s) were so well-known, the titles were not always changed ; the name of the characters were the same from opera to opera. It sounds boring, but this is one of the things that made Baroque Music so interesting :: the audiences knew of the operas ... but they never knew what to expect from one composer from another ; same story ; same characters (with maybe one or two additions) ; same circumstances ... but the music would be very individualistic ... very unique to the uniqueness of the composer.
MAN❗️
What a time to have lived❗️
Please❗️
Excuse my ramblings❗️
Diego Zirih ::
Gluck's version of this opera (Orfeo and Euridice) was very straightforward and pretty-much without vocal-embellishments. The castratro in the main title was more interested in moving the audience instead of blowing them away with incredible vocal dynamics.
People did orpheus because he was a musician in the myth. Thus lending itself to musical treatment.
@@povilzem Metastasio is the writer whose libretti have been set to music more than any other in history -I think his most "musicated" story is his "Dido Abandoned" - based on Vergil's "Aeneid" which scores about 50 composers who wrote music for it closely followed by "Artaserse" which scored almost as many including one in English by Thomas Arne . Other very popular ones were the "Olympic Games" about cheating in sport at the ancient Olympics (Some things never change!") Alexander in the Indies was also very popular with a composer like Pacini (Not Puccini) using the story as late as the mid 1800's. I've just watched an epic performance of "Alexander in the Indies" from the rococo opera house in Beyreuth (Not the Wagner theatre there) and the composer for it was Leonardo Vinci - not THE Leonardo da Vinci of "Mona Lisa" fame but a very talented Calabrese composer of the early 1700's - it was an epic nearly 4 hours long an inevitably it was saturated with bollywood dance routines but still very enjoyable. By the way it was on You Tube - I wasn't there in real life.
The local catholic church a few years ago
did a "production" of
"Rappresentatione di anima et di corpo"
which seemed largely intact.
I have seen several versions of L'Orfeo
My favourite was the "Balkan" style ENO production
where the whole cast danced on stage through the ritornello
and did tableaux vivants when Musica sang. Their tableaux told
the whole story in microcosm.
It always struck me that Orfeo is the only singer in all acts
and all the other singers have one or two acts only.
Monteverdi is great not only as a musician, but also as a dramatist. The conclusion of "L'incoronazione di Poppea" was, and still is, a scandal of truth and bitterness: Justice does not triumph on earth! And in the "Ritorno di Ulisse in patria" we have the only aria ever written in any litterature (except the memories of war, of course) about the theme of hungriness. Who has ever dared to compose an aria for a starving begger?! I only remember a rather similar, and also unique, case in Puccini's "Bohème": "Vecchia zimarra". Who has ever dared to write an aria for an old rag?! And at last: compliments for the pronunciation of the reader! This is the english I like!
Could you do a viceo about Frederic Chopin
ps: love your videos😊
He simply perfected it
This feels like I missed the opening chapter not knowing what Peri did.
0:00
𝙲𝚞𝚛𝚎 9:00
no es la primera,.pero si la primera opera autentica
3:15 th-cam.com/video/lgAt8GGKbUA/w-d-xo.html It's probably not Monteverdi who coined that term
Mrs Modlish taught me this
Well seven years isn't exactly "way down the list"...
Why fill with anachronistic stock footage? Ugh.
0:0
While your main point is excellent, it is a contradiction to imply that the renaissance of Greek and Roman ideas, was about “freedom”. As you say, the Greeks often considered music “simply a mathematical concept”. The truth is that Boethius’, in his “De institutione musica” forbade “taking pleasure in the more lascivious modes” and Plato “prescribes that boys should NOT be trained in all modes” of music. Compare this with plainchant music which rebelliously used all the modes to convey the requisite range of emotions found in scripture. The fact is that one of the staunchest supporters of reviving Greek and Roman restrictions on music was the older music theorist Artusi, who attacked Monteverdi in his thesis “Of the Imperfections of Modern Music." The fights of Monteverdi vs. Artusi, and Lusitano vs. Vicentino should make it clear that the young musicians who founded the Baroque era stood firmly against the government influenced policies that would have constricted emotional expression in music by reviving Greek and Roman ideas. (See the dialogues of Socrates in Plato’s Republic to learn the political motivation behind restricting music).
I've never heard anyone say Monteverdi invented opera, ever.
Heh. I know all this, and I learned it as an undergraduate music student.
Still, very good stuff for the novice. I can't think of anything I'd have changed if I were presenting this to a music appreciation class.
Anything before Orfeo werent operas, they were cute guesses.
This seems like a good time to remind myself that "opera" is actually plural and means "the works", with the singular form being "opus".
At least in Latin.
"Opera" is plural in Latin and singular in Italian, so it can be seen both ways in that regard.
@@TheSummoner I know.
Normally, these would be considered separate, though related, words with different meanings.
But I like to shitpost.
You have to listen to Ilayaraja India, you will be really feeling well... explain us how knowledge he has in music
Excellent history! Thanks.
Who wrote the first opera ultimately depends upon at what point you call what the composers wrote, “opera.” Although I certainly wouldn’t agree, some might even argue that opera didn’t fully emerge until, not Monteverdi, but Verdi - that all opera before then was but a “pale imitation,” so to speak.
I guess it all depends on the reaction of the audiences & critics ? Verdi was a great composer and his music had a richness and melodic lines and dramatic voices and equally dramatic music, that surpassed Monteverdi ... but the latter's music could be very calming and musical ... but after Vivaldi and Handel and the magnificent voices and music of their time, the above statement about "paleness" has never applied to those geniuses of composition and the super-human, twilight zone voices of Vivaldi and Handel that left the audiences of their time ... trying to find adjectives to describe the phenomenal vocal-sounds of the castratri and females of that period.
@@cliffgaither, yeah, probably largely true. Again, I personally disagree that Verdi “made” opera, so to speak, but some people do. I find it hard to imagine anybody claiming that, for example, Don Giovanni, was not an exceptional work of opera.
@Gary Morrison :: Everybody has their favorite composer but that Verdi comment was a new one for me. I think you would agree, only history matters ... chronological order ...
@Gary Morrison :: Yeah ! Mozart ?!! The Don was his masterpiece ! I prefer Vivaldi and Handel, but those two masters of opera would have been overwhelmed by Mozart's gifts.
"some might even argue that opera didn’t fully emerge until, not Monteverdi, but Verdi - that all opera before then was but a “pale imitation,” so to speak."
Then some might be completely off the mark...
Was there any operatic style before L'Orfeo ? The single previous surviving attempt is boring endless declamation, not opera. Orfeo at least contains a few tunes which can be sung in a living way and which are an early form of opera aria. But also Orfeo is very much declamation which requires an audience that can understand the lyrics in Italian.
Soooo...as "humanistic expressionism", opera was never intended to be the "classical (academic) high art" form as it has been regarded for the last 200 years, right?
Opera became a "high art" after WW2. Before, it was a popular art form.
Intro: L'Orfeo music with images of modern orchestra instruments is an insult. Come on! Period instruments, please.
I don't know if it's quite fair to Tallis or Byrd or Josquin des Prez or Lassus to say that Monteverdi invented word-painting, or was the first to really pay attention to the text. Don't get me wrong, I think Monteverdi was amazingly inventive, and managed to do very impressive things with secular texts, but other composers were paying attention to texts long before him.
Whoa he looks exactly like Prince but Italian
Nice try, but in Italian it's "seconda pratica" or "seconda prattica". Italian was a rather fluid set of dialects in the 18th Century, so there were often variations, but never 'seconda practica'.
Bravo !!!
Not as happy with this vid as I am normally. Effort to put up big words like "Relationship music to text" ok Give us some examples. Then "DIFFERENT TIMBRES that represent each character." No sample music or text. Instead he dashes forward to "atmosphere specific to scene." yay some brief examples !Other timesI we get a claim/conclusion and just have to take his word.
Opera singers. No dynamics except loud and louder.
Yeah tell that to Montserrat Caballe, Giuseppe di Stefano, Maria Callas or Renata Tebaldi.
@@armandosanchez4978 or Arleen Auger, Leontyne Price, etc. etc.
It takes so little to pronounce Italian names properly. It's painful to hear them butchered.
Terrible visuals. "Act Two" ... where the 19th-c flute and bassoon join the violin. Yeah. Right. All you kids should know that many of these visuals and illustrations are completely bogus.
You’re only looking at the history of western Opera, eastern Opera from Asian countries predates the creation of opera in Europe.
Well opera origin is not as important as COVID origin:)
How do these correlate at all?
@@gaopinghu7332 You are logical man. But, you overlook the :)
@@graychang-ida Could you just answering the effing question? What has origins of opera got to do with a virus 4 centuries later???
@@anewman1976 How does a 1918 flu pandemic start? It is a mystery! So, does COVID origin:)
@@anewman1976 I think it (Gray Chang's original comment) was meant to be a pun (in a form of a completely nonsensical comment) - simple as that
BTW I only read to the end of the comments because I wanted to see whether anyone had posted something i would agree with - that I find Monteverdi's music excruciatingly boring, but i did not want to create a cause for comments on my taste and listening preferences
𝚎𝚟𝚘𝚕𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚌# 6:32
# 𝚎𝚟𝚘𝚕𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚌 6:32
𝙼𝚎𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐 1609