Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo” at the Lausanne Opera

Filmed at the Opéra de Lausanne in 2017, this staging of L’Orfeo by Monteverdi, directed by Robert Carsen, offers a refined and sensitive reading of the first great masterpiece in operatic history. A carefully crafted production that brings out both the power of the myth and the expressive force of the music.

The Carsen Touch

In 2017, Robert Carsen returned to the Opéra de Lausanne with Orfeo, reaffirming the stylistic signature that has earned him international recognition: clarity of narrative, understated elegance, soft raking light, and a harmonious, carefully controlled colour palette. Monteverdi’s favola in musica unfolds here in a series of tableaux, from a alla Pizzi pastoral in shades of green and gold, to Musica robed in theatre red, and Orpheus in white descending into pitch-black underworlds. This visual economy, based on tonal contrast and spatial geometry, draws from both baroque painting and contemporary minimalism.

A Myth That Still Moves

With its pared-back design—the stage left bare, divine characters entering from the stalls—the production incorporates the edge of the orchestra pit, along which Orpheus and Speranza wander. The myth of Orpheus continues to move us. This too-fragile demigod, distraught at the thought of losing his beloved, reflects our own emotional vulnerability. Librettist Alessandro Striggio and composer Claudio Monteverdi understood this profoundly. Their favola in musica, premiered in 1607 at the Gonzaga palace in Mantua, marks the birth of large-scale opera in the West. Commissioned for the Accademia degli Invaghiti, a humanist circle at the Mantuan court, the work emerged from an experimental court theatre where music and rhetoric were inseparable.

Orpheus’ Glance

What remains most striking in this tale is that Eurydice dies twice. First, bitten by a snake—an accident. Then, again, because of Orpheus, who looks back at her despite being strictly forbidden to do so. That simple act has generated centuries of philosophical, literary and psychoanalytic interpretations: it symbolises transgression, the uncontrollable pull of desire, and the gaze as an act of irreversible loss.

The Birth of Opera

The Orpheus myth was ideally suited to the invention of opera: rich recitatives, fluid ariosos, virtuosic arias, and bold orchestral colouration… above all, it’s about the power of music to express the depths of human emotion. The title role was created by Francesco Rasi, a virtuoso tenor and poet closely connected to humanist circles, whose flexible voice and stage presence directly influenced Monteverdi’s writing. As Jean-Luc Macia noted in Diapason (No. 661, April 2018), Carsen’s interpretation “avoids all dramatic excess, allowing the music itself to guide the emotion with remarkable restraint.”

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Programme

🎼 Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643):

• L’Orfeo, favola in musica, SV 318

Libretto: Alessandro Striggio
Musical direction: Ottavio Dantone, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne
Chorus master: Antonio Greco, Chœur de l’Opéra de Lausanne
Stage direction & lights: Robert Carsen
Choregraphy: Marco Berriel
Set design: Radu Boruzescu
Costumes: Petra Reinhardt

Cast: 

• Fernando Guimarães – Orfeo
• Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani – Primo pastore / Un spirito / Apollo
• José Maria Lo Monaco – La Musica / Messaggiera
• Delphine Galou – Speranza / Proserpina
• Nicolas Courjal – Caronte / Plutone / Un pastore
• Alessandro Giangrande – Pastore secondo / Un pastore / Un spirito
• Federica Di Trapani – Euridice
• Mathilde Opinel – Ninfa

Filmed at the Opéra de Lausanne in 2017.