Orfeo

Story

Synopsis

Claude Goretta brings to life the age-old tale of Orpheus and Eurydice in a fresh adaptation of Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Monteverdi’s fabled opera Orfeo was long described as the first opera to have been written. Although modern scholarship has proven this to be untrue, the work remains one of the pillars of western music history, a musical creation which laid the foundations for much of what was to come. As musicologist Jack Westrup explains, Orfeo marked a major milestone not because it broke new ground, but because imagination had taken precedence over theory. While Monteverdi may not have been a revolutionary, his music represents the culmination of centuries of musical evolution, and shows him as the clear master of both polyphony and monody.

Director

Claude Goretta

Language

Italian

Country

Canada, Switzerland, France, Italy

Release date

18 October 1985

Ensemble

Cast

• 

  Gino Quilico

  Orfeo

• Audrey Michael

  Euridice / La Speranza / Eco

• Carolyn Watkinson

  La messaggiera

• Danielle Borst

  Proserpina