Orpheus and Eurydice: the Marriage of Myth and Music

Orpheus and Eurydice: The Marriage of Myth and Music

The following links may be helpful if you wish to view L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi in its entirety. While this 1607 Baroque production is not the first opera that uses Orpheus and Eurydice as the theme, it is one of the earliest that is still performed today. The first link is for the performance given at the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona (Produced Youtube in June, 2012). It is very interesting from both musical and historical aspects in that the performance and the musical instruments are all historical correct while the performers still maintain a modern flair for contemporary dramatic elements. The second link is one that will give you the English translation of the libretto.

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The following list is an informal short bibliography of some of the more important sources I used for my presentation. It is far from complete as the sources for both the myth and the music are exhaustive.

Brown, Alison;Medicean and Savonarolan Florence: The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion (Brepols: Turnhout,Belgium, 2011).

Carter, Tim and Goldthwaite, Richard; Orpheus in the Marketplace: Jacopo Peri and the Economy of Late Renaissance Florence (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, 2013).

Curtius, Ernst RobertEuropean Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (translated from the German by Willard R.Trask (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1953 and reprinted up through 1990).

Grant, Michael;Myths of the Greeks and Romans (A Meridian Book) Original publication was in 1962 and was reprinted and updated in 1995).

Grout, Donald J. andPalisca , Claude V.;A History of Western Music (sixth edition), [WW Norton and Co. New York, 2001).

Heninger, S. K.“The Renaissance Perversion of the Pastoral” in Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1961), 254-261.

Kirkendale,Warren and Kirkendale, Ursula; Music and Meaning: Studies in Music History and the Neighbouring Disciplines, (Firenze: Leo S. OlschkiEditore, 2007).

Warren Kirkendale; The Court Musicians in Florence During the Principate of the Medici, (Firenze, Leo S. OlschkiEditore, 1993).

Ovid, Metamorphoses (Books IX-XV) Translated by Frank Justus Miller and revised by G. P.Goold (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. First published in 1916 reprinted up through 2005).

Taruskin, Richard; Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid 1-6, Translated by H. R. Fairclough and revised by G.P. Goold (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass, first published in 1916 and reprinted up through 2006).

A Frontspiece for L’Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi