Luogo e data di registrazione		Beethoven-Saal, Hannover (Germany) - 25-30 luglio 1955
	Original Editions		Archiv Produktion | 14057/58 | 2 LP | (p) 1955 | ANA | mono
	Edizione "Codex"		Archiv Produktion "Codex" | 453 176-2 | durata 47' 32" · 56' 44" | LC 0113 | 2 CD | (p) 1997 | ADD | mono
	Executive Producer		Dr. Fred Hamel
	Recording Producer		Harald Baudis
	Editing		Heinrich Keilholz
	Cover		Anon., "Orpheus" (Nuremberg manuscript)
	Art Direction		Fred Münzmaier
	Note		Original-Image-Bit-Processing - Added presence and brilliance, greater spatial definition

ORIGINAL EDITIONS 2 LP - 14057/58 - (p) 1955

Treasures from Archiv Produktion’s Catalogue A rare and valuable collection of documents is the pride of any library or archive. CODEX, Archiv Produktion’s new series, presents rare documents in sound from 50 years of pioneering recording. These recordings have been digitally remastered using original-image bit-processing technology and can now be appreciated in all the richness of their original sound-image. They range from the serene counterpoint of a Machaut, the intensely spiritual polyphony of a Victoria, to the imposing state-music of a Handel. For the artists on Archiv Produktion recordings, a constant aim has been to rediscover the musical pulse of past times and to recreate the spirit of past ages. In this sense each performance here - whether by Pro Musica Antiqua of Brussels in the 1950s, the Regensburg Domchor in the 1960s, or Kenneth Gilbert and Trevor Pinnock in the 1970s - made a vital contribution to the revival of Early Music in our time. CODEX highlights recordings that were unique in their day, many of them first recordings ever of this rare and remarkable repertoire, now appearing for the first time on CD. A special aspect of the history of performance in our century can now be revisited, as great moments from Archiv Produktion’s recording history are restored and experienced afresh. Dr. Peter Czornyi Director, Archiv Produktion "L'ORFEO" BY CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI On 24 Febraury 1607 a group of brilliant and erudite people assembled at Mantua to witness the first performance of the favola in musica L'Orfeo, by the court musical director of the noble house of Gonzaga, Claudio Monteverdi, who was then 40 of age and was already one of the most eminent musicians of northern Italy. The audience were justified in expecting something noteworthly, and they were not disappointed. Orfeo proved itself to be neither a pompous spectacle with music like those customary at courtly entertainments, nor a musically rather arid melodrama in the style evolved a few years previously in Florence, but a hitherto unique mixture of the two. True, it was a drama set word for word to music, like its Florentine predecessors, but there was none of the slavish subortination of music to text which had weakened the earlier operas. Monteverdi employed all the means available to him: the old polyphonic style used side by side with the new single voice technique, and all the wealth of instrumental effects known at that time. These various elements were not brought into play haphazardly or for their own sake, as in the old festive works, but solely for the purposes of the drama. Orfeo is therefore a music drama, the first in musical history, although from a textual point of view it is merely a more lyrical than dramatic pastoral in a style common at that time. Orpheus and Eurydice appear in the First Act among the carefree shepherds and nymphs as among their own kind, and in the Second Act a nymph brings Orpheus the news of Eurydice's death. The two following acts, set in the Underworld, contain virtually all the dramatic action: the winning over of Charon, the reunion of Orpheus and Eurydice, and the final tragedy of Eurydice's second death. The lyrical Fifth Act, Orpheus' lament, returns to the pastoral scene of the First and Second Acts, with as little action. This division of the work between two clearly defined environments exercised a strong influence on Monteverdi in his choice of instrumental colours. He paints the idyllic scenes on earth, with their nymphs and shepherds, by means of the gentle tones of flutes, strings, harpsichord and organ: the Underworld is depicted by the awe-inspiring tones of trumpets and trombones, with a portative organ as continuo. The hero Orpheus, with his characteristic music, appears in both parts of the work. The brightness of the scenes on earth is characterized by a species of lyrical recitative, alternated by short strophic songs, madrigalesque choric dances, and lively, rhythmic orchestral interludes. These varied elements combine to create the idyllic atmosphere of the pastoral scenes. The happy mood is destroyed at a blow with the news of Eurydice's death. At the entrance of the nymph bringing the tragic message in the middle of the Second Act it is as though the door to another world were opened. The gently flowing lyrical declamation hitherto employed is now no longer able to bear the emotional burden of the situation. A more dramatic mode of expression is called upon, the vocal line becoming more forceful, the harmony taking on a new tenseness, with astonishingly sharp dissonances. In short, all formal considerations are treated as being of secondary importance to the music's primary purpose of creating in the spectators the most potent emotional feeling possible. A psychological masterpiece and a highspot of the opera is the short dialogue of questions and answers between the Messenger and Orpheus, the message of Eurydice's death itself, and the despairing cry "Ohimè" with which Orpheus reacts to the news. This impassioned dramatic declamation (especially impressive in the narration of Eurydice's death, in the lament of Orpheus which follows it, in the expression of his anxiety on behalf of his regained and then irrevocabily lost Eurydice, and in his final lament in the Fifth Act) is alternated, in the scenes in Hades, with pathetic choruses and solemn, ominous instrumental interludes. A born musical dramatist, Monteverdi knew that a continuous state of emotional tension would tire the spectators. He therefore introduced not only straightforward declamatory passages into the recitative, but also an out-and-out comic part, that of the ferryman Charon in the Third Act. Even Orpheus' great vocal solo "Possente spirto, e formidabil nume", in which he employs all his wonderful art as a singer, does not disturb the rough Charon from his stupid self-satisfaction. Monteverdi's Orfeo is the earliest real music drama, that is to say the first work in which the music is entirely one with the dramatic idea, but both the music and the idea itself are far removed from anything to which modern audiences are accustomed, and it is necessary to make an effort to see the work from the viewpoint of the period at which it was written if the full measure of its greatness is to be appreciated. All that later generations have achieved with powerful musical-dramatic situations, novel instrumental effects and huge orchestral forces, had its origins in the achievement of the operatic genius Claudio Monteverdi, who used all that he found serviceable of the resources available to him, with the enthusiastic approval of his more enlightened contemporaries. Anna Amalie Abert (1955) (Translated from the Germany)