L'Orfeo, Roundhouse

The Royal Opera House bring the earliest surviving opera, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, to Chalk Farm's Roundhouse.

It seems appropriate that the earliest opera which survives in its entirety should be a paean to the power of music.

In first opera, Claudio Monteverdi returned to the classical myth of Orpheus, a musician so accomplished that his lyre defied death. 

The Royal Opera House relocate from their Covent Garden home to the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, presenting Monteverdi’s groundbreaking dramatic work for the first time in the company’s history. With Michael Boyd, former Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, making his directing debut and early music specialist Christian Curnyn conducting, L’Orfeo promises to be unmissable.

Although it was composed over 400 years ago, L’Orfeo has lost none of its impact. Opening with rousing fanfares, the opera includes colourful harmonies in madrigal style, lively dances, chilling representations of the underworld and stirring laments. The work saw Monteverdi advance his revolutionary new style of recitative: with speech-like rhythms over sparse accompaniment, it embraced the expressive potential of the text to dramatic effect.

The exciting young cast includes Mary Bevan, known for her sparkling soprano; Susanna Hurrell, acclaimed for herexpressivity in Baroque repertoire; and the up-and-coming Hungarian-Romanian baritone Gyula Orendt. Book now to see this landmark production/