Apollo's Fire Marks the 400th Anniversary of Opera L'Orfeo
October 23, 2007
If you're going to storm the gates of hell with a mind to win back your departed lover, it helps to have musical ability. Or so it goes in L'Orfeo, a work created four centuries ago by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi that's widely recognized as one of the first operas. Apollo's Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, visits Penn State's Schwab Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the opera by performing vocal highlights from L'Orfeo.
The tale of the musician Orpheus has inspired poets and composers for centuries. After he loses his beloved Eurydice to a venomous snake, Orpheus heads for Hades–with only his lyre and his music as weapons–in an attempt to retrieve her.
Tickets for the Center for the Performing Arts presentation are $31 for an adult, $14 for a University Park student and $24 for a person 18 and younger. Buy tickets online at www.cpa.psu.edu or by phone at 814-863-0255. Outside the local calling area, dial 1-800-ARTS-TIX. Tickets are also available at four State College locations: Eisenhower Auditorium (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays), Penn State Tickets Downtown (10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday), HUB-Robeson Center (11 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays) and Bryce Jordan Center (10 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays). A grant from the Penn State Student Activities Fee Funds makes University Park student prices possible.
The period-instrument concert features about half a dozen vocal soloists, a like number of chorus singers, a Baroque dancer, and instrumentalists performing on recorders, violins, viola, cello, theorbos (plucked string instruments), harpsichord and organ.
The Schwab debut of Apollo's Fire also features chamber music by Monteverdi, who bridged the music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and his early-seventeenth-century contemporaries Dario Castello and Maurizio Cazzati.
Apollo's Fire, directed by conductor and harpsichordist Jeannette Sorrell, has earned an international reputation for what a Boston Globe critic calls its "energy, discipline, style and pizzazz." Sorrell, the Globe adds, is "a musical live wire–one heck of a harpsichordist and a lively conductor."
Sorrell, who founded the ensemble in 1992 with help from Roger Wright, then artistic administrator of the Cleveland Orchestra, took its name from the classical god of music and the sun. The group, which includes early-music specialists from throughout North America and Europe, performs compositions from the 17th and 18th centuries on the instruments for which they were composed.
This event is made possible through a partnership with Penn State's Institute for the Arts and Humanities and School of Music. It is part of the institute's 2007-2008 initiative called Moments of Change: The Early Seventeenth Century and the Roots of Modernity. WPSU-FM is the media sponsor. Artistic Viewpoints, an informal discussion featuring Apollo's Fire Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell, is offered in Schwab Auditorium one hour before the performance and is free for ticket holders.
Contact: Laura Sullivan, 814-863-6379