Language: Italian
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish

Created at the Ducal Palace in Mantua in 1607, L’Orfeo de Monteverdi is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world.

It is a musical fable, Monteverdi's first opera is an extension of the Madrigals and has now become one of the essentials of the lyrical repertoire. It marks a turning point in the history of music and symbolizes the border between the Renaissance and the Baroque period. With this opera, Monteverdi becomes, if not the first, at least one of the main creators of a new form: the dramma per musica or theatrical action in music. Monteverdi’s Orfeo is reputed to be the first opera in history! Alessandro Striggio's libretto is based on the myth of Orpheus as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses and certain passages from Virgil's Georgics.

Any performance of Monteverdi's l'Orfeo goes back to the beginnings of opera, since we agree that it is one of the first completed forms, heir to several decades of experimentation and constitutive of the canon of dramma per musica - in any case the oldest that has come down to us complete. To interpret L'Orfeo is therefore to share the fervor and enthusiasm of the creators and spectators of a new genre, of a form of art through which the humanism of the 15th-16th centuries rediscovers Antiquity to the light of Christianity and reinterprets Christianity in the light of ancient thought.

The Basilica of Saint-Denis was a place to invest for the interpretation of this founding masterpiece. For this, the Festival called on Leonardo García Alarcón, familiar with Monteverdi and the work he had already conducted in 2013 in various places with the Baroque Academy of Ambronay, and the director Jean Bellorini, for elsewhere director of the Gérard Philippe Theater in Saint-Denis.

Director: Leonardo García Alarcón (Music Conductor), Jean Bellorini (Director Staging and Lighting)
Cast: Orfeo: Valerio Contaldo, Music / Eurydice: Francesca Aspromonte, The Messenger: Giuseppina Bridelli, Pluto: Konstantin Wolff, Proserpine: Anna Reinhold, Charon: Salvo Vitale, The Nymph: Amélie Renglet, Namur Chamber Choir, Cappella Mediterranea