ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, September 20, 1996 TAG: 9609200024
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: OPERA REVIEW
SOURCE: SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
It took its sweet time getting here, but thanks to Craig Fields, the 17th century finally found Roanoke.
Two decades after everything old became the hottest new thing in classical music, the early music movement arrives this weekend with Opera Roanoke's production of "L'Orfeo" by Claudio Monteverdi at Center in the Square.
It's the world's first opera - the first surviving one, anyway - and it's the first major homegrown classical music production in these parts with any claims to period authenticity.
OK, so an early music purist would have a cow at the sight of the digital sampling synthesizer in the orchestra pit that will be reproducing the sound of an early baroque organ.
But Opera Roanoke's General Director Craig Fields says that in most respects, in ``singing style, instrumentation and general sound, look and feel'' this "L'Orfeo" will give you a pretty good idea of what turned Italy on its collective ear nearly four centuries ago.
"L'Orfeo" is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, a story that has had an enduring attraction for opera composers from Monteverdi to Philip Glass. Orfeo, sung by a baritone, returns from the war a hero. Already famous as a poet and singer, he is awarded the beautiful Euridice for his wife. But, while gathering flowers for her wedding garland, she is fatally bitten by a snake.
Orfeo's love is so great that he sneaks into Hades - the world of the dead - to rescue his fiancee. Pluto, the god of the underworld, agrees to relinquish Euridice on one condition: that Orfeo journey back to the world of the living without looking behind him to see if she is accompanying him. He almost makes it back before succumbing to a spasm of doubt and turning to check if she's actually there, at which point she is lost to him forever, except as a constellation in the sky.Conductor Jan Harrington of Indiana University said that singers well-versed in the grand opera conventions of Wagner and Mozart need to familiarize themselves with vocal practices current in 1607 to get Monteverdi right. "The singers have to go back and restudy some of the ways that they express things in order to be part of the style," Harrington said.
A good example is the way the singers of Monteverdi's day embellished their vocal lines to add emotion and depth. Take a trill, for example, said baritone Keith Spencer, who sings the role of Orfeo. "It's a lot of repeated notes on the same tone, as opposed to a contemporary trill, which fluctuates back and forth between [two neighboring] tones."
Spencer reproduced a sample Monteverdian trill as a demonstration earlier this week, a rapid-fire staccato stutter which, sure enough, sounded like nothing that Donizetti or Puccini would have called for in later centuries.
The baritone almost came prepared to sing the wrong opera, thanks to a misunderstanding by his manager, who told him to work up a different Orfeo. "I was inadvertently advised that it was the Gluck 'Orfeo' we were doing, so I bought a score and had that role almost completely memorized," said Spencer.
It was only two months ago that it dawned on him and Fields that they were preparing two different operas. plenty of time, said the baritone, to get this role memorized as well.
For the first time ever, the orchestra as well as the players in an Opera Roanoke production will perform in period costumes. Conductor Jan Harrington has put together an early baroque "band" of violins, cellos, two lutes and a chitarrone (a kind of bass lute), a guitar, a harp, two harpsichords, recorders, two baroque organs, a trombone choir and two trumpets.
Said Harrington, "It's a texture that's very transparent, that gives the effect of musical pointillism or impressionism."
Of course, whether Western Virginia opera audiences, accustomed for years to a meat-and-potatoes diet of 18th- and 19th-century grand opera standards, will go for something as different as Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" is another question.
They'll have four nights to find out. Opera Roanoke's "L'Orfeo" runs Saturday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights on Mill Mountain Theatre's main stage at Center in the Square. Curtain time for each performance is 8 p.m.; tickets range from $23 to $30, with seats remaining for all performances. For more information call Opera Roanoke at 982-2742.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB