The Santa Fe Opera prides itself on presenting a premiere nearly every year, and, continuing the tradition, the current season brought forth a newly commissioned score by a young composer of notable achievement. The task entrusted to Nico Muhly, however, whose opera Marnie premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 2017, was not to produce an original work, but a new orchestration for modern instruments of another composer’s opera: Orfeo, by Monteverdi. The result was heard in a production by another shining light of opera’s younger generation, Yuval Sharon, the disruptive artistic director of Detroit Opera. It proved to be the high point of SFO’s five-opera season.
Orfeo (1607), though justly regarded as the world’s first great opera, receives little, if any, attention today from major opera companies in the United States, which makes its appearance in Santa Fe especially welcome. The piece is well known thanks to recordings and performances in Europe, in addition to the occasional outing in the States by Baroque period-instrument ensembles, such as the Cleveland-based Apollo’s Fire, which mounted a well-received production in 2018. Monteverdi devotees can plausibly wonder, in light of the many editions already available, whether a need even exists for a modern version. We know from printed scores dating from the time—an extreme rarity for a Baroque opera—that Monteverdi contemplated an orchestra consisting of forty-two woodwind, brass, string, and continuo instruments. The practicability of Monteverdi’s instructions has been amply confirmed, even by performances in theaters of appreciable size.
So, why is a new modern orchestration necessary? It probably isn’t in Europe, which is well ahead of us in quantity and prominence of period-instrument ensembles, many of which have ongoing relationships with opera companies. In the States, however, where period-instrument ensembles are fewer (and opera houses are bigger), the availability of a good modern edition could facilitate performances of this treasured work. Such productions would be akin to modern-instrument performances of Handel operas, which are the norm in big American houses.
Muhly’s new orchestration is a thoroughly professional effort respectful of Monteverdi’s creation. It is nothing like such relics as Wagner’s version of Gluck’s Ifigénie en Aulide or Strauss’s of Mozart’s Idomeneo, reimaginings which are deeply imprinted with the revisor’s personality. SFO’s music director, Harry Bicket, an esteemed conductor of Baroque music, laid down an essential ground rule: the new edition had to retain Monteverdi’s vocal parts and bassline, a decision which also had the practical effect of preserving the overall formal structure. Harmonies, too, are kept within Monteverdian boundaries, lacking the “wrong notes” that a neoclassical recreation might include. Under Bicket’s leadership, the SFO orchestra seemed to take to the new orchestration enthusiastically.
The stirring but brief opening Toccata, here warmly dominated by the brass, put one’s mind at ease. (The Toccata was played just once, rather than three times, presumably because it had already been heard, in the Bayreuth manner, as the audience gathered outside the theater.) Indeed, the new orchestration works best when it calls the least attention to itself. Tinkling, bell-like sounds or other noises extraneous to Monteverdi’s soundscape from instruments like the glockenspiel, vibraphone, piano, and celesta occasionally stood out unnecessarily and should have been toned down. Perhaps Muhly’s most significant contribution was to enhance the instrumentation accompanying the voices during their solos. In the original orchestration, nearly all of this music is accompanied solely by the continuo group, often in a recitative-like style. By making these passages more melodic and rhythmically active, Muhly enhances the musical interest, though he sometimes falls prey to the covering of voices.
Bicket’s rule maintaining the vocal parts and bassline also served as a check on Sharon, who once staged a truncated Götterdämmerung in a parking garage and another time reversed the order of the acts of La Bohème. A whimsical element is present in many of Sharon’s productions, including this one, which has an amiable, down-home quality far removed from the courtly entertainment the opera originally provided. In this version’s prologue, the opera begins with La Musica (played by Lauren Snouffer, who also sings Speranza, in alluring voice) arising, decrepit, from a hospital bed; typically, La Musica merely appears from behind a curtain. Some have interpreted Sharon’s alteration as a celebration of the return of classical music following the pandemic (if a rather late one, given that SFO resumed operations two years ago); a cynic might say instead that this sad figure represents the current state of classical music.
The initial scenes play atop a large sphere, the lower part of which is concealed by stagecraft, where nymphs and shepherds gather for the wedding of Orfeo and Euridice. Costumes (designed by Carlos J. Soto), like the set, are simple and basic in color. Clad in black, with an enormous skirt spreading across the sphere, La Messaggera (an empathetic Paula Murrihy) delivers the news that Euridice has received a fatal snakebite. As Orfeo begins his subterranean rescue mission, the sphere rises and opens up to reveal the underworld. The consummate musician, Orfeo sings his ornate aria “Possente sprito” intended to charm the ferryman Caronte (sternly sung by James Creswell) while suspended in midair, even venturing acrobatic maneuvers mid-song. After the underworld has reclaimed her, Euridice’s final utterances are not sung by the singer, but are instead played on an old gramophone, which Orfeo subsequently carries around with him—a lame joke that spoils the moment’s poignancy. Still, Orfeo here emerges as an engaging, accessible, and heartwarming work.
At the second performance, the acrobatic maneuvers were presumably less arduous than originally planned, on account of a back injury suffered by the otherwise irrepressible Rolando Villazón while rehearsing “one of the flying sequences” (his words), which prevented him from appearing at the premiere. It’s a wonder that the physical demands placed on singers by stage directors don’t result in more injuries. Villazón’s Orfeo was otherwise charismatic, and he sang with emotional involvement, if little vocal bloom. At the end, Sharon has La Musica appear in lieu of the god Apollo—La Musica silently mouths Apollo’s words, which were sung solidly by the bass-baritone Christian Simmons—to invite Orfeo to the heavens where he can gaze on Euridice in the stars. Music is thus given additional power in an opera about the power of music.