FOR 400 years, the dramatic music and emotional power of ‘Orfeo’, Monteverdi’s baroque masterpiece, has impressed. Opera Theatre Company brings this epic of love interrupted to the concert hall for Saturday June 16 at 8pm, on national tour.
Expect the high octane romance of opera, soaring between life and death, love and loss, and punishment for seeking to defy the gods. Orfeo, the Olympian prophet who could sing the wind out of keening and wring tears with the beauty of his lyre, goes to rescue his missus Euridice from Hades:
“In the company of his joyful acolytes, the wedding day celebrations have begun and Orfeo is poised to marry his beloved Euridice. Then mortal disaster. Can our desperate hero dare to rescue his lover or will he throw his life away in an impossible contest with Death itself?”
Opera Theatre Company welcomes back founding artistic director Ben Barnes, who directed the company’s first production in 1986. His staging of ‘Orfeo’ is described as “richly re-imagined for a 21st century audience”.
Sung in English, Monteverdi’s score is performed by players drawn from the Irish Baroque Orchestra with musical direction by Andrew Synnott on keyboard.
The cast includes Oliver Mercer as the questing lover Orfeo, Irish sopranos Sadhbh Dennehy and Daire Halpin, Karolina Blixt from Sweden, US bass Matthew Trevino, Peter O’Donohoe, and OTC Young Associate Artists Fearghal Curtis and Padraic Rowan.
Book on 061-331549 and www.uch.ie for Saturday June 16.
