L’Orfeo by Jordi Savall

When I watched some videos from this production on YouTube, they sounded and looked little cheap. But this is true: you should never ever judge whole production by a couple of excerpt videos because this production as whole has the first rate quality.

This Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo was orchestrated by Le Concert des Nations and conducted by Jordi Savall. His orchestration is rich and sophisticated. All the singers are uniformly very good. Especially Sara Mingardo as the messenger stands out. The depth in her singing is amazing. I was also very impressed by the beauty of Adriana Fernandez’s voice as Proserpina.

Even though this is top class production, there are a few minor flaws, or more personal dislikes. The old-fashioned costumes and the stage settings are outdated. The singers who sung Orfeo and Eurydice are very good singers but they sang as they scraped the surface when the two main characters should have more depth. The orchestration is wonderfully rich but almost little too Classical and little too sophisticated for my taste.

Even considering these, this is still very good production.