Gluck

ORFEO ED EURIDICE abridged version

KATHLEEN FERRIER ANN AYARS ZOE VLACHOPOULOS Glyndebourne Festival Chorus Southern Philharmonic Orchestra FRITZ STIEDRY

Side No. 1

ACT 1. Ah! seintorno a quest’ urna funesta (Solo & Chorus); Amici, quel lamento (Recit.); Ritornello; Euridice! Euridice! (Recit.); Piango il mio ben cosi (Aria); Voi del regno (Recit.); Dalla cetra tua (Aria); Gli sguardi trattieni (Aria); Che disse? (PRecit.)

ACT 2. Prelude; Chi mai dell’ Erebo (Chorus); Deh placatevi con me (Solo & Chorus); Misero giovane (Chorus); Mille pene (Aria); Ah! quale incognito (Chorus); Men tiranne, voi sareste (Aria); Le porte stridano (Chorus)

Side No. 2

ACT 2. (concl.); Che puro ciel! (Aria); Torna, o bella (Chorus)

ACT 3. Ah vieni, o diletta (PRecit.); Vieni, con me o cara (Duet); Ah! dovess’ io saper (Recit.); Che fiero momento (Aria & Duet); Ah! per me il duol ricomincia (Recit.); Che faro (Aria); Ah! finisca e per sempre (Recit.); Gaudio, gaudio son al cuore (Trio); Trionfi Amore (Chorus)

Gs bio a - > - 28a KATHLEEN FERRIER (Contralto)

Euridice ee Sas ANN AYARS (Soprano)

Amor oe 1» « ZOE VLACHOPOULOS (Soprano)

with THE GLYNDEBOURNE FESTIVAL CHORUS and

THE SOUTHERN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA

conducted by FRITZ STIEDRY

Gluck was forty-eight and had a long list of conventional Italian operas to his name when, with the Italian litterateur Ranieri Calzabigi, he wrote his Orfeo edEuridice for the name-day of the Austrian Emperor Francis, October 5, 1762. This opera has always been claimed as the first of his “reform” operas and in a sense this is true: but Orfeo is also in many ways a typical court festival production of the eighteenth century. It was almost certainly his librettist, Calzabigi, who was responsible forgiving a definite form to Gluck’s discontent with the conventional Italian opera seria of the day and this form was largely influenced by the operas of Lully and Rameau, which Calzabigi had seen in Paris. Nothing of course but Gluck’s genius can account for the dramatic power of the music, its superb passion and sweep: but those qualities had never before made themselves felt to anything like the same degree in his work. French opera had not the tradition of conversational recitative (recitativo secco) and in Orfeo this Italian form is replaced by the full, melodic recitative accompanied by the orchestra which was common in French opera. More revo- lutionary still were the concentration of the libretto on a single, simple story instead of the involved intrigues of the opera seria and the cutting of the noble formalities in favour of a more direct and natural expression of feeling.

ACT 1 A deserted glade.— Eurydice is dead and the curtain goes up on the last funeral

ceremonies around her grave. The chorus sing their farewell in a grave C minor movement with a heavy plodding bass which accentuates the atmosphere of hopeless grief. Orpheus stands by the open grave and only opens his mouth to utter his wife’s name. The whole scene is a dramatic tableau: there is virtually no action. Orpheus’s short recitative merely serving to introduce a slight variation in which the chorus scatter flowers on the grave.

A short ritornello in which the orchestra takes up the theme of the opening chorus and finishes with a series of chromatically “dying falls” of intense expressiveness, in- troduces Orpheus’s first song. It is a song, and not an aria of the old conventional type, in the key of F major. Orpheus’s grief is not that of any husband weeping at his wife’s grave: already it has that clear, transfigured beauty which transcends all purely human grief. Before the second verse there is a passionate recitative, punctuated with pathetic woodwind phrases, in which Orpheus expresses his longing for death if Eurydice is not restored to him. Finally he decides to defy the gods of the underworld and to go himself to reclaim her. A dramatic recitative, with tremolando accompaniment, is interrupted by the appearance of Amor, god of Love.

Calzabigi’s Amor is the pagan Cupid, a mischievous boy with something of Shakespeare’s Puck about him. He is a god and the F major of his song—“Go with lyre and singing” —is in the F major of supernatural bliss, beyond sorrow and happiness: but his phrases have a playful, perky cut which recalls the expressions on the faces of those fat putti which the eighteenth century liked to arrange in decorative attitudes around their monuments.

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In the recitative which follows Amor explains the condition upon which Orpheus can hope to bring Eurydice back from the underworld —he must never set eyes on her until the~ journey is over or he will lose her again, for ever. Then in a dance-like G major aria (this time Gluck returns to the formal ABA type) he bids Orpheus pluck up courage. The Jento | e grazioso has a slightly faster middle section, still in G majar, which again emphasises the mischievous nature of the god: he enjoys the situation and the imposition of a condition which Orpheus in his first excitement only half grasps. Then Amor disappears and Orpheus ponders on his message. At first he is unbelieving and the orchestral phrase, coming to rest twice on a dominant seventh, pictures his incredulity. Then he realises the agonizing difficulty of the task and he is appalled as he foresees Eurydice’s uncomprehending grief. But he accepts the challenge and the act ends with a spirited allegro recitative in which he declares himself ready to face anything in order to regain his beloved wife.

ACT 2 In the Underworld.—A short maestoso movement opens with a dramatic unison E

flat, twice repeated, introducing a stupendous “questioning” phrase such as Beethoven loved. The whole is repeated a tone higher and then comes a reminiscence of the opening chorus of lamentation from Act 1. The “question” is explained by the appearance of Orpheus, a mortal, who amazes all the powers of Hades by his sudden appearance among them, playing on his lyre (represented by the harp in the orchestra) to appease their wrath and persuade them to listen to him. “Who is this mortal?” the chorus of souls sing—a heavy unison C minor, rising and falling, with the tremolando strings underlining their horror and amazement. They threaten him and the weighty sforzando chords of the orchestra express their gestures, but he walks slowly through them, still playing his lyre and imploring pity. To each of his phrases they hurl a brutal unison “No!” and in a shuddering chorus which gradually increases in pace they ask what he can be seeking in their “halls of affliction and terror,” the “dwelling of death.” It is only when Orpheus explains that he too is suf- fering the agonies of Hades that pity at last moves them and Elysium’s gates are unbarred for him.

The scene changes to Elysium and Orpheus enters heralded by a theme on the oboe, accompanied by a murmuring sextuplet figute in the strings, which Gluck had used — though never with this effect —in two of his earlier operas, Ezio and Antigono. Orpheus’s first impression is of light and then of the perfect satisfaction of each sense. This scene contains the most elaborate of allthe recitatives in Orfeo, rich and free in form and follow- ing exactly the dramatic situation. Thus the oboe theme appears in A minor, and then D minor, as Orpheus gradually becomes aware of the absence of Eurydice, which alone is wanting to his happiness. Even in Elysium it is she only who can satisfy his longing. “As if her hand fell inadvertently and of itself into his own” —in Dr. Einstein’s happy phrase —she is with him and the act ends with another F major chorus of the blessed spirits, as they hand her over into his keeping.

ACT 3 The return from the Underworld.— The act opens with an anxious F minor animato in

the strings. Orpheus urges Eurydice to follow him but she has not yet grasped what has happened and when she realises that it is really he, her husband, she begs him to look at her. When he refuses and begs her again to hurry on with him, she at once becomes suspicious and angry and the recitative culminates in something like a quarrel. Calzabigi and Gluck obviously conceived Eurydice as a passionate, imperious woman, easily jealous and not used to being disobeyed, even by her husband. The duet between the two which follows is one of the more conventional numbers in the opera, each vainly pleading their case with the other. Eurydice’s recitative and air which follows are dramatic, though nothing happens except that, woman-like, she continues to state her case with more and more vehemence, until she finally says that she will die again if he will not grant her one look. There are repeated changes of tempo corresponding to Eurydice’s changes of tactics and a short duet movement in which she remembers and regrets the tranquil delights of Elysium, comparing them favourably with her present cruel trial. Finally, after another impassioned recitative in which Orpheus has increasingly less to answer to Eurydice’s objections, he grants her request, looks at her and in a moment the death which she has been threatening really occurs.

“Farewell, remember me always, farewell.” Aquick hammering figure in the orchestra expresses Orpheus’s distracted grief and he bursts into the famous “Che faro senza Eurydice?” —“What shall I do without my Eurydice?” Critics have found fault with the conventional form and ambiguous character of this aria which, they say, might as well express joy as grief. It is certainly beautiful in itself but is it in place here? Perhaps yes, after all, for at this moment Orpheus the man, the husband of Eurydice, is speechless and. it is the artist, the singer who hursts into pure melody. After it is over the man finds his tongue again and in a recitative which breaks into a beautiful arioso prayer, begging Eurydice to wait for him, he decides to take his own life. Amor intervenes, telling him that his constancy has been tested long enough, and on the spot Eurydice is brought back to life.

Now all is set for the grand finale, with ballets and chorus, which was essential for a court performance on the Emperor’s name-day. After the chorus, a trio for the three principal characters, starting in E minor andante, ends in a brilliant allegro E major, with strings of thirds and sixths in the Italian manner. The ballet takes up the theme of the chorus which is then repeated and brings the work to a close.

© 1966, The Decca Record Company Limited, London.

ACE i a

ACE OF CLUBS RECORDS, Regd, Trade Mark THE DECCA RECORD COMPANY LTD., LONDON,

MONO ACL 293

ARL 1878

SPEED 33% |,

GLUCK: ORFEO ED EURIDICE (Abridged Version) Act 1. Ah! se intorno a quest’ urn,

Amici, quel lamento (Recit); Ritorni Piango il mio ben co

Vio del re (Recit); a tua (Aria); Gli sguardi trattieni (Aria): C ? (Recit)

Act 2. Prelude; Chi mai dell’ Erebo i con me (Solo and Chorus); Misere giova -horus); Mille pene (Aria);

Ah! quale incognito (Chorus); Men tiranne, voi sareste (Aria); Le porte stridano (Chorus)

KATHLEEN FERRIER, ANN AYARS, ZOE VLACHOPOULOS with the GLYNDEBOURNE FESTIVAL CHORUS

nd the SOUTHERN PHILHARMONIC ORCHEST

MONO ACL 293

ARL 1879

2 ace of clubs

SPEED 33%

GLUCK: ORFEO ED EURIDICE oe Version) Act 2 2. (Concl.) Che puro cie

KATHLEEN. FERRIER, ANN AYARS, Z0E VLACHOPOULOS with the GLYNDEBOURNE FESTIVAL CHORUS

and the SOUTHERN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA conducted by FRITZ STIEDRY