lørdag 12. september 2015
lørdag 5. september 2015
SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MONTEVERDI'S ORFEO
Just some few hours left before the premiere of Monteverdi's Orfeo in Vilnius today. We know the myth of Orfeo pretty well - the story about the demi-God that loses his beloved Euridice, travels to the underworld to retrieve her, but loses her again, and this time irretrievably - as he turns around to look at her before they are safely back. And then in the end he joins Apollo to ascend to heaven.... followed by a rather triumphant choir and orcestral ending.
After working on the music for a long time, I have come to really appreciate it. Musically it is of course a masterpiece, but that alone is not enough to make it not boring - at least not for me!
Orfeo's loss of Euridice is (to me) interesting not because he is a half-god, but it becomes interesting only if he is a real person. Every day, some lose what they love most in the world: a parent, a wife, a child. We see in Europe today refugees that have lost absolutely everything they had - their homes, their loved ones. I worked for two years as a Norwegian teacher for refugees in Norway, and I have met some of them. These people have been to the underworld. Some of them never manages to come back - physically or mentally. Some of them do manage to come back, but they never come back the same again. They have seen a darkness that they can never unsee. As does Orfeo.
I don't take his trip to the underworld literally. It is his mental underworld, the abyss of his mind, his desperate hope to see Euridice just one more time.
It is interesting that after Euridice's death, there are no more "real people" in the opera. No friends. No family, only gods and mythical creatures, who are only dreams and fantasies. From here on, Orfeo is completely alone in his own mind.
At some point, the similarities to Wilhelm Müller / Franz Schubert's Winterreise started to appear to me. Throughout Winterreise, the traveller does not meet a single person. There are vague memories of her, and there are disturbed thought of dogs chasing him and crows throwing snowballs at him, but noone else. No talks, no conversations! Until in the last song he meets the hurdy-gurdy man, as Orfeo meets Apollo. It is not clear who this old man in Winterreise is - is he finally a human being, a way out of the loneliness, is he a symbol of madness or a symbol of death. We don't know.
But the traveller says to him: "Wunderlicher Alter, Soll ich mit dir gehn? Willst zu meinen Liedern Deine Leier drehn?"
So Müller's traveller is also a singer. A singer that has become quiet, because he has no one to sing to or nothing to sing about anymore, just as Orfeo says that Euridice was the only worthy of his songs and lyre. And now it will be quiet.
There exists a production where Orfeo commits suicide in the end - Apollo leads him away from this world, for sure, but in a brutally direct way. For those that would find that ending shocking - it is quite in line with the Orfeo MYTH, where in one version he also commits suicide. But I also found it absolutely "logical". The old man in Winterreise is for me the end, the death, be it physical or mental. And so with Apollo in Orfeo - there is no glory in it. In best case, there might be rest at last.
Many say that "Orfeo" is about the power of music. In my mind: yes and no. For me, it is about communication and expressing.
I imagine Orfeo as a person that is maybe not such a good talker. His way of communicating is music. And we all have our ways of communicating: some of us express ourselves best through music, some through words, some through paintings, some through body language. We might even express ourselves best not to other humans, but to nature or to animals. But express ourselves we must - it is what makes us human and what makes it worth living.
When Orfeo loses Euridice, he loses his music. Playing and singing is of no comfort to him anymore. And by losing that, he loses his way of relating to other people, and that is how he - so clearly in the opera - becomes alone. I am in no way any Orfeo, but there was a period in my life I completely lost the will to sing - I had nothing to sing about - and the pain of that was excruciating. My story is not Orfeo's story, I am far, far too blessed with joys, but there are people who, as Orfeo, lose their wish, or will, or ability to express themselves, and thereby to relate.
Monteverdi's Orfeo is for me about terrible loss: The loss of something or someone we hold dear, and the loss of ourselves. We can see pictures of people with such losses on our TV-screens everyday now, and there is an Orfeo in all of them!
To portray this on stage? An overwhelming task, and maybe not in my powers, but if I can make someone in the audience tonight feel just a tiny little bit of empathy for people AROUND them, then I will be very, very happy.
After working on the music for a long time, I have come to really appreciate it. Musically it is of course a masterpiece, but that alone is not enough to make it not boring - at least not for me!
Orfeo's loss of Euridice is (to me) interesting not because he is a half-god, but it becomes interesting only if he is a real person. Every day, some lose what they love most in the world: a parent, a wife, a child. We see in Europe today refugees that have lost absolutely everything they had - their homes, their loved ones. I worked for two years as a Norwegian teacher for refugees in Norway, and I have met some of them. These people have been to the underworld. Some of them never manages to come back - physically or mentally. Some of them do manage to come back, but they never come back the same again. They have seen a darkness that they can never unsee. As does Orfeo.
I don't take his trip to the underworld literally. It is his mental underworld, the abyss of his mind, his desperate hope to see Euridice just one more time.
It is interesting that after Euridice's death, there are no more "real people" in the opera. No friends. No family, only gods and mythical creatures, who are only dreams and fantasies. From here on, Orfeo is completely alone in his own mind.
At some point, the similarities to Wilhelm Müller / Franz Schubert's Winterreise started to appear to me. Throughout Winterreise, the traveller does not meet a single person. There are vague memories of her, and there are disturbed thought of dogs chasing him and crows throwing snowballs at him, but noone else. No talks, no conversations! Until in the last song he meets the hurdy-gurdy man, as Orfeo meets Apollo. It is not clear who this old man in Winterreise is - is he finally a human being, a way out of the loneliness, is he a symbol of madness or a symbol of death. We don't know.
But the traveller says to him: "Wunderlicher Alter, Soll ich mit dir gehn? Willst zu meinen Liedern Deine Leier drehn?"
So Müller's traveller is also a singer. A singer that has become quiet, because he has no one to sing to or nothing to sing about anymore, just as Orfeo says that Euridice was the only worthy of his songs and lyre. And now it will be quiet.
There exists a production where Orfeo commits suicide in the end - Apollo leads him away from this world, for sure, but in a brutally direct way. For those that would find that ending shocking - it is quite in line with the Orfeo MYTH, where in one version he also commits suicide. But I also found it absolutely "logical". The old man in Winterreise is for me the end, the death, be it physical or mental. And so with Apollo in Orfeo - there is no glory in it. In best case, there might be rest at last.
Many say that "Orfeo" is about the power of music. In my mind: yes and no. For me, it is about communication and expressing.
I imagine Orfeo as a person that is maybe not such a good talker. His way of communicating is music. And we all have our ways of communicating: some of us express ourselves best through music, some through words, some through paintings, some through body language. We might even express ourselves best not to other humans, but to nature or to animals. But express ourselves we must - it is what makes us human and what makes it worth living.
When Orfeo loses Euridice, he loses his music. Playing and singing is of no comfort to him anymore. And by losing that, he loses his way of relating to other people, and that is how he - so clearly in the opera - becomes alone. I am in no way any Orfeo, but there was a period in my life I completely lost the will to sing - I had nothing to sing about - and the pain of that was excruciating. My story is not Orfeo's story, I am far, far too blessed with joys, but there are people who, as Orfeo, lose their wish, or will, or ability to express themselves, and thereby to relate.
Monteverdi's Orfeo is for me about terrible loss: The loss of something or someone we hold dear, and the loss of ourselves. We can see pictures of people with such losses on our TV-screens everyday now, and there is an Orfeo in all of them!
To portray this on stage? An overwhelming task, and maybe not in my powers, but if I can make someone in the audience tonight feel just a tiny little bit of empathy for people AROUND them, then I will be very, very happy.
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