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Classical Clip of the Month Archive: /

Classical Clip of the Month for March 2012
(clickable links in the text are in bold)

  IMG: click picture to buy this CD
click picture to buy this CD


Claudio Monteverdi

L'Orfeo

English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir
His Majesty's Sackbutts and Cornetts

John Eliot Gardiner, Anthony Rolfe Johnson
Lynne Dawson, Nancy Argenta
Anne Sofie von Otter, Julianne Baird
Mary Nichols, Simon Birchall
John Tomlinson, Michael Chance
Mark Turner, Howard Milner

   

There is music; there is drama. There is musical drama. Monteverdi's 1607 take on the Orpheus legend is in a category of its own, however. It is, mostly justifiably, considered the first unequivocal opera in Western music history. And, it's a great work to boot! That Monteverdi wrote such a wealth of other great music (L'incoronazione di Poppea and the madrigals spring to mind), and was an important, though casual, musical philosopher (there's that small matter he addressed in the preface to the Fifth Book of Madrigals), is a bonus, and nothing short of astounding.

This month's clip, the opening of Orpheus, is a brilliant, stirring way to kick-start the opera.


       

Launch date: 21 November 2001.
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