The beautiful Schlosstheater Schwetzingen, nestled within the former Elector’s impressive hunting palace and garden, carries an inherent expectation for productions of the most refined taste, and this performance of Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo certainly did not disappoint. While this world’s oldest preserved tiered theatre provides an intimacy probably reminiscent of the 1607 premiere at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, director Markus Bothe and designer Robert Schweer look further back to the dawn of the opera. Tonight’s performance, run without an interval, was a convincing triumph of visual aesthetics and dramaturgy clarity.
The curtain rises on a high-fidelity recreation of an art gallery, where Botticelli’s Primavera looms within a massive gilded frame, composed entirely of actors in flowing, pleated white linen and adorned with delicate floral wreaths. This stunning display of tableau vivant powerfully reminds us of the Florentine origins of the operatic genre. Shachar Lavi’s La Musica, dressed in mantle, delivers her prologue with conversational poise. Then the pastoral figures within the frame begin to stir, celebrating the love of Orpheus and Euridice.
The entire production is crafted to heighten the presence of the protagonist. While Julian Prégardien’s Orfeo appeared slightly serious or even a bit stiff, in the face of Euridice’s (Amelia Scicolone) sun-drenched warmth, his vocal delivery remaining steadfast, anchored in a sense of profound loyalty. The act’s climax, a series of ensemble dances, is visually stunning, yet the execution felt rigid, missing that Mediterranean intoxication required to fully ignite pastoral joy. The arrival of Marie-Belle Sandis’s Messaggera shifts the atmosphere, although Orfeo remained remarkably restrained in the initial moments of her bad tidings, his emotional outburst only erupting after a period of agonising contemplation.
Then the backdrop transitions to a Baroque Vanitas with skulls and cracked mirrors; the hero begins his descent. In the confrontation with Nathanaël Tavernier’s Caronte, however, the notoriously difficult coloratura passages felt slightly muffled and lacked a chiselled clarity, perhaps explaining why the ferryman was so easily lulled to sleep. The scene concludes with a powerful visual metaphor, Orpheus stepping through an empty frame to enter the underworld, which is a masterpiece of spatial imagination. The shards of broken glass from the previous Vanitas scene now fill the stage, reflecting stray beams of light through a dense fog. In this chilling environment, the dialogue between Ruth Häde’s persuasive Proserpina and Thomas Berau’s authoritative Plutone felt particularly urgent.
Prégardien’s subsequent psychological transformation was meticulously rendered. Departing from initial joyfulness, his transition from doubt to the second loss of Euridice, and finally to his bitter renunciation of women, was handled with immense maturity. This arc found its resolution in the arrival of Ilya Lapich’s Apollo, who balanced divine authority with empathy. In the final scene, Orpheus is bound with tape to the now-veiled Primavera painting – the only ambiguity in the production leaving the audience to wonder if this is a sanitised nod to the hero’s original bloody end, or perhaps a subtle commentary on modern climate activists.
Musically, Jörg Halubek and Il Gusto Barocco were exemplary, moving through Monteverdi’s score with surgical precision. The orchestra utilised late-Renaissance strings alongside a vibrant array of winds and plucked instruments, creating a kaleidoscope of sound. The continuo section, featuring harpsichord, chest organ, and the regal, brought the different characters and realms to life with vivid textural contrast. Particularly in the Underworld scenes with Caronte, the harp provided a breathtaking backdrop, while the two violins created haunting echo effects to evoke the vast, lonely acoustics of the Styx. The Men's Chorus of the Nationaltheater Mannheim further enriched this world, using the depth of the stage and off-stage areas to create a stunning sense of spatial immersion.
Bothe’s production remains relentless and focused: the storytelling, costumes and choice of imagery on stage are strikingly simple, clear and visually sumptuous. There are no jarring or forced concepts, avoiding the pitfalls of Regietheater in favour of a pure, aesthetically coherent tribute to opera’s first great masterpiece. In this exquisitely restored Rococo building, the audience was fortunate to witness the fragrant early flowering of opera in the heart of early spring.
