L'Orfeo, excerpts from Act I.
0:08 Toccata (trumpets) and ritornello (strings)
1:25 Prologo (La Musica - soprano)
6:30 Aria (Il Pastore - tenor)
8:04 Coro (Chorus of shepherds)
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PROGRAM NOTES
Monteverdi's magnum opus Orfeo, based on the Greek tale of unfulfilled love and tragic death, sets a theme for later Italian operas both in structure and in content. This work, which was dedicated to Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua, was first presented in a public performance in 1607 for the annual city-wide festival. It became one of the earliest grand operas in Europe.
The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice permeated all areas of Italian art - particularly in the realms of music and painting. The operas Orfeo (1647) of Luigi Rossi and Euridice (1600) by Jacopo Peri were just two of several such works in the early 17th century.
I created this electronic rendition of the first 5 movements of the opera using MusicStudio 2 (iPhone app) for the instrumental parts (trumpets, sackbuts, violin, viola, cello, violone, theorbo, tympani) and Vocaloid 4 (PC program from Yamaha) for the humanoid voices and text. The female voice is Prima, an English language female voice bank (with a somewhat more operatic quality than my previous MAIKA version) and the male voice is Cyber Songman, also an English language module. The original MIDI file (with oboe in place of human voices) was uploaded to the website CPDL.org by Peter Rottländer. In the latest version, I slowed the tempo a bit and adjusted the accent to something closer to Italian. I added a stereophonic effect to the chorus and vibrato to the soloists.
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Below is a description of the images in this video in the order of appearance:
1. L'Orfeo, Favola in Musica, cover page, 1609 edition.
2. L'Orfeo, pages 1-2, 1609
3. Orfeo with violin, Pietro Novelli, c1630?
4. L'Orfeo, page 3, 1609
5. Divine Inspiration of Music, Niccolò Renieri, Holland, c1640
6. L'Orfeo, page 4, 1609
7. St. Cecilia with angel, Carlo Saraceni, Rome, c1610
8. L'Orfeo, page 5, 1609
9. Orpheus with viol, Benedetto Gennari I, c1610
10. L'Orfeo, pages 6-7, 1609
11. Concerto, Leonello Spada, c1615
12. L'Orfeo, pages 7-10, 1609
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For the full lyrics in Italian with English translation, please refer to this document at this web address:
[ Ссылка ]
