This is how it all began: Claudio Monteverdi's L’Orfeo, which premiered in 1607, marks the birth of opera, of “dramma per musica.” The work involves a famous myth from Greek antiquity and recounts the moving story of the singer Orpheus, who cannot accept the death of his beloved Eurydice. And so he follows her into the Underworld, where he tames the wild beasts with his marvelous singing and even moves the raving Furies to tears. Until he gains access and finds his Eurydice again … Monteverdi sets this story with dramatic power and thrilling emotion: Recitatives and arias, songs and dances, choruses and instrumental fanfares endow the score with continual musical variety. “Monteverdi’s operas simply grip you, they captivate you from beginning to end,” says Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who launches his Monteverdi trilogy in Lucerne with L’Orfeo, in homage to “il divino Claudio,” as contemporaries named the composer, thus marking the 450th anniversary of his birth.

Source:: https://www.lucernefestival.ch/en/program/english-baroque-soloists-monteverdi-choir-sir-john-eliot-gardiner-soloists/419