Weekly Album Of The Week #8

In 1603 Maria de Medici married Henry IV King of France. To celebrate the occasion, a local composer named Peri wrote the first (surviving) opera L'Euridice. The story is about a man named Orfeo who is going to marry his love, Euridice (yer-ee-dee-chae) and she is tragically bit by a snake the morning of their wedding and dies. So he travels to the underworld to bring her back. Peri's version had a happy ending with Orfeo finding her and bringing her back to the land of the living and "happily ever after" etc.... Meanwhile in Mantua, Claudio Monteverdi believed he could write an opera based on the same material (basically) and do it better. He changed the ending to better refelect the original Greek drama and had Orfeo agreeing with Hades that he could only bring her back if he didn't speak to her or look at her. He is unable to resist the temptation and when he looks at her she is taken back to the underworld and he dies.

The result of Monteverdi's hubris is what most educated people agree is the first operatic MASTERPIECE ever written: ORFEO. This is such a cool piece of music I couldn't even begin to gush about how awesome it is to listen to. How smartly this guy composed this piece has sent ripples into the opera world and can still be heard rumbling past us today. Check it out at a local library (like I did after studying it in my music literature class) or buy it on DVD (it is a faithful rendition of the premiere and gives you a pretty good into the past, if you're into that sort of thing). Either way it is time and money well spent.