Customer Reviews

Monteverdi: L'Orfeo

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's difficult to choose between the two best recordings of this beautiful early opera. The John Eliot Gardiner/Anthony Rolfe Johnson set is also lovely. This set is more full-blooded and takes less liberties with the score. Occasionally with opera on CD I find myself having to choose between purity of tone and dramatic verisimilitude - in this set one is able to enjoy both. There is really nothing to choose between the beauty of singing in each set as both Laurence Dale (on this set) and Rolfe-Johnson (on the Gardiner version) display such flawless technique and beauty of tone and also both deliver dramatically, so it comes down to an individual choice between styles of orchestration. I must also praise the Italian phrasing throughout which scores heavily compared with the Bostridge version, where the language sounds as if it something kept behind glass. If I could only have one version of L'Orfeo it would be this one but ideally one should have both this version and the Gardiner set; both are pretty close to flawless. Listening to Dale singing the lovely `Possente spirto' as I type this, I'm just grateful to live in an era when an opera first performed in 1607 can still be heard, in all its heart-stopping beauty, in the comfort of one's own home.

This is an exquisite and intelligent recording. It's clear that great thought has gone into the choices made in interpreting the contradictory score. The orchestra under René Jacobs achieves great warmth and beauty of expression, and it's hard to believe the casting of singers has been bettered. The casting of Dale in the title role is particularly effective, with his gorgeous warm lyric tenor eliciting sympathy with every note.

As Iain Fenlon noted in his Gramophone review: "In the end the success of any performance of this work hangs decisively upon the casting of the title-role. In Laurence Dale, Jacobs has found a powerful protagonist, a singer capable of negotiating the sudden changes of emotional state that characterize the part at some at its most critical moments with conviction. More to the point, ''Possente spirto'' itself, the spiritual and literal centre of the opera, is something of a tour de force, conveying the central conception of the power of song with true rhetorical understanding. This is a version of L'Orfeo to be reckoned with."

Perhaps Efrat Ben-Nun's ornamentation (in the role of Music) could re-open the controversy over how singers of Monteverdi's era would have improvised and embellished, but I enjoyed her interpretation very much. She combines an appealing directness with great sensitivity in her phrasing. The rest of the cast are equally excellent. Paul Gerimon is suitably disturbing as the malevolent Charon.

I would unreservedly recommend this recording to all lovers of Monteverdi and early Opera.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or listener in this case). However, there is absolutely no doubt that this Jacobs version is the most powerfully Romantic version ever recorded. Now, when I say "Romantic" I do not necessarily mean lush. Romantic in this case I am referring to the term as applied to an interpretive style, which can be heard so very vividly in the opening Toccata. Never has it been played like this!!! This is the most red-blooded version ever recorded. Also in the great Possente Spirito, Laurence Dale sings with true emotion and passion. His singing is not technically all that good actually, you can hear him strain, and he does not have the command of trilling and embellishment that, for example, Nigel Rogers has (on the very good EMI Orfeo). Yet this endears this version to me even more. On their respective EMI and DG/Archiv recordings, both Rogers and Rolfe-Johnson are both technically fine (Rogers is amazing in his beauty of tone and command of trills), yet Dale brings a human touch to this ancient, and somewhat distant, first opera.
Although played on period instruments, it is hardly period sounding. I cannot say enough about this superb cd set, it is a gift, it is a revelation. I cannot imagine a finer Orfeo ever being recorded in our lifetimes.

This comment refers as to the author as to the performers. Absolutelly amazing.

Poor Caronte!This awful Orfeo voice (Laurence Dale) doesn't
put anyone to sleep like a log.It merely makes the listener
to regret wasted money on the wrong choice.Go to Gardiner/Rolfe
Johnson to hear a memorable Orfeo.Unbelievable is the human
being's bad sense of taste....