Orpheus operas
Orpheus with violin in a painting by Cesare Gennari from the 17th century
Operas based on the Orpheus myth , and especially the story of Orpheus' journey to the underworld to save his deceased wife Eurydice , were at the beginning of the genre and are still being written in the 21st century. Orpheus, the Greek hero , whose song touched both wild animals and gods, even tempted trees and rocks to dance, became an emblematic example of the power of music over the centuries.
Here is an annotated list of operas (and works of related genres) based on this myth. The works are listed according to the composer and the year in which they were first performed. Where no performance dates can be proven or a performance never took place, the year of the composition was given (as best as possible).
1600-1700
- 1600 - Jacopo Peri : Euridice , the first real opera, the music of which has survived the centuries.
- 1602 - Giulio Caccini : Euridice
- 1607 - Claudio Monteverdi : L'Orfeo , widely regarded as the first opera in history, has been performed frequently since the 1980s.
- 1616 - Domenico Belli: Orfeo dolente, a group of intermedi between the acts of Tassos Aminta
- 1619 - Stefano Landi : La morte d'Orfeo
- 1647 - Luigi Rossi : Orfeo, one of the first operas to be performed in France. Rossi's own wife died while he was composing the work.
- 1654 - Carlo d'Aquino: Orfeo
- 1659 - Johann Jacob Löwe : Orpheus of Thrace
- 1672 - Antonio Sartorio : Orfeo
- 1673 - Matthew Locke : Orpheus and Euridice, a masque performed between the acts of Elkanah Settle's The Empress of Morocco .
- 1676 - Giuseppe di Dia: Orfeo
- 1677 - Francesco della Torre: Orfeo
- 1683 - Johann Philipp Krieger : Orpheus and Eurydice
- 1683 - Antonio Draghi : La lira d'Orfeo
- 1686/1687 - Marc-Antoine Charpentier : La descente d'Orphée aux enfers
- 1689 - Bernardo Sabadini : Orfeo
- 1690 - Louis Lully : Orphée
- 1698 - Reinhard Keizer : The dying Eurydice or Orpheus
- 1699 - André Campra : Orfeo nell'inferni
1701-1800
- 1701 - John Weldon : Orpheus and Euridice
- 1715 - Johann Joseph Fux : Orfeo ed Euridice
- 1726 - Georg Philipp Telemann : Orpheus
- 1740 - John Frederick Lampe : Orpheus and Eurydice
- ca.1740 - Jean-Philippe Rameau (unfinished)
- 1749 - Giovanni Alberto Ristori : I lamenti d'Orfeo
- 1750 - Georg Christoph Wagenseil : Euridice
- 1752 - Carl Heinrich Graun : Orfeo
- 1762 - Christoph Willibald Gluck : Orfeo ed Euridice (French version Orphée et Euridice from 1774)
- 1767 - François Hippolyte Barthélemon: The Burletta of Orpheus
- 1775 - Antonio Tozzi: Orfeo ed Euridice
- 1776 - Ferdinando Bertoni : Orfeo ed Euridice (based on the same libretto as Christoph Willibald Gluck's better known work)
- 1781 - Luigi Torelli: Orfeo
- 1785 - Friedrich Benda : Orpheus
- 1786 - Johann Gottlieb Naumann : Orpheus og Eurydice
- 1788 - Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf : Orpheus the Two
- 1788 - Johann Friedrich Reichardt : Orpheus
- 1789 - Vittorio Trento : Orfeo negli Elisi
- 1791 - Joseph Haydn : L'anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice
- 1791 - Ferdinando Paër : Orphée et Euridice
- 1792 - Peter von Winter : Orpheus and Euridice
- 1793 - Prosper-Didier Deshayes: Le petit Orphée (a parody of Gluck's opera)
- 1796 - Luigi Lamberti: Orfeo
- 1796 - Francesco Morolin: Orfeo ed Euridice
- c. 1796, before 1797 - Antoine Dauvergne : Orphée (not listed)
- 1798 - Gottlob Bachmann: The death of Orpheus / Orpheus and Euridice
1801-1900
- 1802 - Carl Conrad Cannabich: Orpheus
- 1807 - Friedrich August Kanne: Orpheus
- 1813 - Ferdinand Kauer : Orpheus and Euridice, or This is how it goes in Olympus
- 1814 - Marchese Francesco Sampieri: Orfeo (cantata?)
- 1858 - Jacques Offenbach : Orphée aux enfers ( Operetta )
- 1860 - Gustav Michaelis: Orpheus on the upper world
- 1867 - Karl Ferdinand Konradin: Orpheus in the village ( operetta )
1901-2000
- 1907 - Fernando de Azevedo e Silva: A morte de Orfeu
- 1907–16 - Claude Debussy (unfinished)
- 1913 - Jean Roger-Ducasse : Orphée, premiered at the Opéra Garnier in a production by Ida Rubinstein .
- 1925 - Gian Francesco Malipiero : L'Orfeide, cycle in three parts: I. La morte delle maschere, II. Sette canzoni, III. Orfeo
- 1925 - Darius Milhaud : Les malheurs d'Orphée, chamber opera based on a libretto by Armand Lunel .
- 1926 - Ernst Krenek : Orpheus and Eurydice
- 1932 - Alfredo Casella : La favola d'Orfeo, chamber opera based on Polizianos L'Orfeo
- 1951 - Pierre Schaeffer : Orphée 51
- 1953 - Pierre Schaeffer , Pierre Henry : Orphée 53
- 1956 - Tom Jobim , Vinícius de Moraes : Orfeo da Conceição (in the cinema: Orfeu Negro )
- 1978 - Hans Werner Henze : Orpheus (Vienna Version 1986)
- 1983 - Reinhard Febel : Euridice
- 1986 - Harrison Birtwistle : The Mask of Orpheus
- 1993 - Philip Glass : Orphée, chamber opera with a libretto by the composer based on Jean Cocteau's film Orphée
- 1996 - Lorenzo Ferrero : La nascita di Orfeo, musical action in one act, libretto by Lorenzo Ferrero and Dario Del Corno, premiered at the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona
From 2001 onwards
- 2005 - Ricky Ian Gordon : Orpheus and Euridice, a one-hour cycle in 2 acts.
Remarks
literature
- Vanessa Agnew: Enlightenment Orpheus: The Power of Music in Other Worlds . Oxford University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-533666-5 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
- Tanja Sofia Göddertz: Che farò senza Euridice? Orpheus from Poliziano to Badini . Shaker Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8322-6216-7 .
Web links
- Reinhard Kapp: A chronological list of theatrical, literary and cinematic works based on the Orpheus myth (PDF; 740 kB)
- Various excerpts on works, composers and genres from: Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ed. L. Macy (accessed August 22, 2007), grovemusic.com , access for subscribers.