Monteverdi's L'Orfeo is one of the first operatic masterpieces. It may be nearly four centuries old, but Jonathan Miller's semi-staging for the South Bank's Inside Monteverdi weekend released the work's undiluted dramatic power. Just as Monteverdi's music humanises the Orpheus legend - Orfeo, performed here by Mark Tucker, was no ethereal demi-god, but a red-blooded, tormented man - Miller's production effortlessly moved between the pastoral realm of the shepherds, the spirits of Hades and the celestial domain of the gods.
The cast's performance alternated with that of musicians: members of the New London Consort, directed by Philip Pickett. Every aspect of the production enhanced the directness of the drama. With Shirin Guild's elegantly informal costumes and Sue Lefton's archaic choreography, the singers created a community of characters in which gods and humans existed on the same plane.
The music was integrated into the fabric of the storytelling. The opera opens with a prologue for La Musica, here sung with crystalline clarity by Joanne Lunn, in a paean to the powers of music. In passages such as Orfeo's aria in act three, when he tries to win over the boatman of the Styx with the power of his singing and virtuosity on the lyre, Pickett's players became part of the drama's mythic world. Walking among the musicians, Tucker coaxed the theorbo and organ players to produce ravishingly ornate music.
With the excellence of the cast and the authority of the playing, inspired by Pickett's infectious energy, the evening revealed the range of L'Orfeo's music, from the imposing, brassy fanfares that dramatised the underworld to the seraphic violins that accompanied Orfeo. The musicians conjured spine-tingling effects with the simplest of gestures, such as the tenebrous organ line that dramatised the moment when Orfeo heard the news of Euridice's death, or the single chord that sealed his fate as he turned to gaze on his beloved in the underworld. L'Orfeo has a dramatic brilliance that few composers have ever achieved, and the work was created anew by the clarity of this staging.
