This month, Naïve Classiques will release two recordings of music by Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo sung and conducted by Emiliano Gonzalez Toro and his GRAMMY nominated ensemble, I Gemelli (October 2) and ...

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, unveiled in 1607 in Mantua, was the first masterpiece of the newly invented genre of opera. John Eliot Gardiner set the gold standard among recordings in 1987, with the late ...

What makes Claudio Monteverdi's Favola d'Orfeo (Legend of Orpheus), premiered at the northern Italian court in Mantua in 1607, the very first opera? Naturally there were a few forerunners. However, ...

The myth that opera was born of a miracle dies hard. Musicologists no longer insist that what has proved to be a uniquely innovative art form for four centuries was the exclusive product of scholars ...

Juneau’s Orpheus Project, formerly known as Opera to Go, will present its production of “L’Orfeo: The Tale of Orpheus” on February 12, 13 and 14 in Juneau. The production features music direction by ...

Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was regarded as revolutionary when it was first performed at Mantua’s ducal palace to the court of the Gonzaga dynasty. A courtier wrote excitedly, “It should be most unusual, as ...

It’s perpetually astounding that the first real opera should have sprung as perfectly formed it did from Monteverdi’s pen in 1607. Thomas Guthrie’s semi-staged L’Orfeo for Robert Hollingworth’s I ...

Is it possible for one person to invent an entire form of art? It would seem like a tall order by any standard. For example, there is cave art as old as 30,000 years -- the earliest paintings ever ...

Familiar to UK audiences as a recitalist, Dietrich Henschel has been inexplicably neglected by this country's opera ­companies. You get a strong sense of what a theatrical animal he is, however, from ...