L’Orfeide

About the show

This three-part opera opens as Orpheus disrupts an impresario’s commedia dell’arte performance, locks the masked players away, and introduces new figures of human life. The middle part, Sette canzoni, consists of seven unrelated mini-operas: a girl abandons her blind companion; a friar hurries a praying woman from church; a mother fails to recognize her son returned from war; a drunkard is mistaken for a lover; a serenader goes unheard beside a death; a bellringer sings while warning of a fire; and a clown meets a masked woman after a funeral procession. In the final part, courtiers watch a violent puppet drama about Nero and Agrippina. Orpheus sings, puts the audience to sleep except for the queen, and escapes with her.