Monteverdi's L'Orfeo
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Transcript of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo
Fanny ChenOctober 19, 2007
L’Orfeo, The First Performance
My dear Mistress,
I am writing to you by candlelight from Mantua. It is the first chance I have had
to lay pen to paper since yesterday, when the Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga put on L’Orfeo
(the play I had spoken to you of months ago) for the Accademia degli Invaghiti. People
filled the room to brimming, and I was almost without a seat. And for good cause. The
parts were written by the talented Signor Alessandro Striggio, and were set to music by
Signor Monteverdi. What poetry! And how cleverly the music amplified the emotion of
the poetry!
Call me lovestruck, if you will, for I tell you that I felt as if there were some
divine being speaking to me through the favola en musica. Is not the story of Orfeo my
story as well? To be governed by passion, for you, for music, for love. I trust you
remember the story; I am eager to relate my thoughts on this masterpiece!
In Act One, Orfeo and Eurydice sing solos to each other right before they are to
be married. I remember this moment clearly, for I was shocked at Orfeo’s expression of
his love. Whereas most of the rest of the act up to that point had been sung in catchy
melodies with fast-tempos accompanied by a whole range of lively instruments,
especially by the chorus of nymphs and shepherds, Orfeo begins his piece on a much
lower register and drags his notes out, almost to the point of being doleful. He
accompanies himself on a lyre by plucking a few chords, mostly for emphasis. The
dynamic of the song also changed. Rather than being a rather uniform loud volume,
Orfeo sings much more softly. What of the exuberant love of youth? What of the ecstasy
of entering in holy matrimony with one’s beloved? Should he not be more energized by
his love rather than sapped to the point of losing his ability to even strum the lyre? I
decided I would pay special mind to how Monteverdi portrays the passion-filled Orfeo.
After hearing more of the “rosa del ciel” solo, I thought, perhaps the changes in
the music served to emphasize Orfeo’s love of Eurydice. When he sings to her and about
her, he does not follow on the same musical themes as the chorus of nymphs and
shepherds because he loses track of the physical reality. “Rosa del ciel,” he sings,
dropping the tempo and register on “rosa,” gently rolling the “r” and letting the “o” build
in volume and strength. Again, he does this with “vita del mondo,” stretching out “vita.”
After his many descriptions of her, he asks, “Hast thou ever seen a lover more joyful and
fortunate than I?” And here, he quickens the tempo and lets his voice soar to a high
register. Yet, speaking of her again, “miu ben,” his voice drops again to the tender, long,
intimate caress that he associates with her being. The long, drawn-out and tender notes
paint a picture of Eurydice as gentle and innocent and long-lived in his memory.
In Act 2, Silvia, Eurydice’s companion, rushes in to tell of Eurydice’s death. It is
one of the most beautifully contrived and moving pieces I have ever heard. “Ahi casi
acerbo,” she sings. “Ahi,” a loud, high note, pierces through the rhythmic and melodic
theme of the pastoral songs that praised Orfeo’s happiness. It does not fit in with the
harmony or the rhythm of the shepherds’ songs. The lyre accompaniment’s chords do
not harmonize with Silvia’s singing. Just as her song breaks the various harmonies the
momentum of pastoral songs, Silvia has painfully broken the happy moment and is
poised to break Orfeo’s heart.
She relates the tale of Eurydice’s untimely death, a moving piece to be sure. She
broke my heart when she sang, “Ch’ella I languidi lumi alquanto aprendo, e te
chiamando, Orfeo, Orfeo!” This is the moment when Eurydice dies, the moment to
which her life culminates and ends with a plea to Orfeo. I can’t quite describe how this
hit me, how, as Sylvia’s voice rose and rose, both in register and in volume. “E te
chiamando, Orfeo” all came out in one big gust, faster in tempo than the wordpainting of
Eurydice’s closing eyes that had come the line before. I thought she had expressed all the
fear and hope and sadness that one name could convey, until, riding on the momentum of
this phrase, she paused and blasted another “Orfeo.” She sings the highest and loudest
note in the entire piece on the “fe,” but “o” drops again, as if on this breath, while calling
out his name, Eurydice’s spirit departs to the underworld.
In Greek tragedy, each hero is confronted by a fatal flaw that will lead him to his
unhappy fate. Yet, it is unclear whether the fault lies in the fate or the flaw, for
sometimes it seems as if the flaw would not be a flaw at all if not for the fate. Orfeo, the
passionate musician, as every young child knows, finds his flaw in his consuming
passion. Yet, I find it hard to imagine a man who would not be so consumed by passion
if he were thus in love. If I were in Orfeo’s shoes, if I had found the love of my life and
lost her in the same breath, and to a serpent, to the devil, no less! Mistress, do you
understand my gist? Any sane, dispassionate man, presented with the same fate, would
find his brains beaten about in his head, his heart torn in shreds.
I am truly impressed by the way in which Monteverdi gave life to Orfeo’s lines as
he responds to the news of his beloved’s death. At first, unable to bear the news, Orfeo
softly whispers, “Tu, se morta, se morta mia vita, ed io respiro?” The “tu” sounds like a
caress, but by the end of “morta,” his voice dies out, and the lyre dies completely for a
short, painful silence. He restates “se morta” but this time, his lyre pucks out a dissonant
chord which filled my heart with anguish, especially when the phrase resolves at “mia
vita” with a beautiful, clean, harmony but is cut off again by an unnerving, brief silence.
The silences suggest death, as we do not expect each phrase to be cut off with complete,
deliberate silence just as Orfeo did not expect Eurydice to die so soon. To an extent, it
also mimics the sudden catching of breath during sobbing. This leads us to “ed io
respiro,” which has a slightly louder dynamic, but its most defining characteristic is the
change in rhythm to two dotted notes and a full note. The rhythm makes the phrase
sound declarative, a question of why but also a statement of fact. Eurydice is dead, but
Orfeo is breathing. Alas.
However, this is not all that the silences do. They also serve to break up the
phrases to prevent momentum from building in the music. Why would Monteverdi not
want momentum to build at this clearly momentous moment? The broken structure and
momentum-less structure of the first rhetorical question draws attention to the sudden
gust of emotion in the second, parallel rhetorical question: “Tu se da me partita, se da me
partita per mai più, mai più non tornare, ed io rimango?” The pattern of repetition within
this rhetorical question is carefully crafted to ramp up momentum and intensity of
feeling. The two repeated phrases, “se me da partita” and “mai più” are repeated such
that they are separated by a brief breath from their twin and so that each part fits in
seamlessly with a different part of the sentence. The repetitions do not drag. Instead,
they allow Monteverdi to intensify the dynamics and the pitch seamlessly. “Ed io
rimango” follows the same rhythm as “Ed io respiro,” and becomes the climax of his
craze as he questions and acknowledges his loss. His lament heightens and heightens in
intensity until, all of a sudden, his voice becomes softer again. He has decided that he
will go into the underworld and rescue his love.
And he does. He follows Speranza to the underworld, sings Caronte to sleep with
the most beautiful verses that I have ever heard uttered, and convinces Pluto to let
Eurydice go under the promise that he will not look back at her until he has led her to
daylight. As he leads her out, he sings a wonderful skipping ode to his lyre which has
helped return him to his love. His lyre plucks out a fast, steady beat while his song
matches his lyre in enthusiastic and steady harmony. In the next section of his song, he
begins to question whether or not he is being tricked into walking out of the underworld
without his Eurydice. His accompaniment loses its steady rhythm and quick tempo, and
his voice does too. However, he does not lose his lyricism. He ponders whether or not to
look back, and decides that it can do no harm to follow his heart. Although I had
expected him to look back just then, he did not! Rather, pounding noise from behind the
scenes frightens Orfeo into doing so. After the noise, there is a distinct change in Orfeo’s
voice. He no longer exuberant or mildly suspicious. He is terrified that something has
happened to his lovely Eurydice. And how his terror passed through me as well! “Ma,
che odo?” escapes from his mouth, no longer a sweet, harmonious sound, but rather
words pulled out of their poetry and thrust into the furor of the moment. Orfeo sings
forcefully, the dynamics of his voice rising and sinking, pounding unanswerable
questions into an unknown audience. “Ed io ‘l consento?” he sings, echoing in melody
and rhythm his rhetorical questions from before, when he promised to save Eurydice.
I knew then that he would turn. And he did. And even though I knew, even
though I had seen this story played out on stage many times, my heart still shattered at
Eurydice’s song. Well accompanied, words of happiness and love harmonized well with
the lyre and words of bitterness and misery and despair received harshly plucked,
dissonant chords. Typical of Eurydice, she does not blame Orfeo; rather, she says, “Cosi
per troppo amor dunque mi perdi,” which names the culprit an excess of love. Her “ed io
misera” distorts Orfeo’s “ed io” phrases, being both in a minor key and dropping in
volume at the last word. It is discordant and not declarative; rather, it is almost a sigh.
The parallelism between the words but the divergence with the music allows us to feel,
yet again, the pain of Orfeo and Eurydice’s separation.
Mistress, I know the accepted interpretation of this piece would denounce Orfeo
for not honoring his promise not to look back. It is his personal weakness and his passion
which causes his unhappiness. Yet, I cannot but wonder after seeing this opera, is it truly
so? Were I in Orfeo’s place, and you behind me, having heard a loud noise, could I resist
turning? Putting words with music in this way truly allows several layers of meaning to
be hidden into each verse. Oime indeed.
I could bore you with more and more pages about this delightful opera. The
costumes, the contraptions, news of the singers. By itself, it has proven my trip to
Mantua a worthy one. Yet my candle burns low, and I must end this letter. Please let
me know how you are and when I may next see you.
Awaiting your reply,
FL.