Baroque Beauty: Musical Aesthetic Features of Monteverdi’s Orfeo

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-094-7_28How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Baroque; Orfeo; Monteverdi

Abstract

Monteverdi’s first opera, Orfeo, was completed in 1607 and is one of the most representative. Although it was completed after the release of Peri and Caccini’s Eurydice, it was far ahead of its predecessors in terms of structure and orchestration and is one of the most artistic of the early operas. Orfeo is an opera in five acts written by the playwright Alessandro Streccio in collaboration with the composer Monteverdi. The tragic ending of the early Japanese version of Orfeo on VCD shows that Monteverdi’s approach is quite different from that of the peri and Caccini’s Eurydice. Monteverdi uses a large number of monophonic arias, pastoral songs, and a great deal of instrumental music in this work. An aria is a form of expression between an aria and a cantata. Through the singing of the musical goddesses in the prologue, the audience is informed of the story of the opera, and the whole work is a representation of Monteverdi’s bereavement through the singing of the characters. At a time in history when the term ‘pera’ had not yet become commonplace, Monteverdi describes Orfeo as a ‘musical story’ that expresses his longing for his wife. The work also features a large number of instrumental arrangements at the opening of the opera, including over forty different instruments. These include small violin, old viola, old cello, double bass, trombone, cornet, soprano recorder, trumpet, harp, large guitar, as well as a harpsichord and lute.

Copyright

© 2023 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Hewen Zhang
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/08/29
TI  - Baroque Beauty: Musical Aesthetic Features of Monteverdi’s Orfeo
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange (ICLACE 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 228
EP  - 234
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-094-7_28
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-094-7_28
ID  - Zhang2023
ER  -