The magic started early. As we sipped our drinks on the lawn outside the Garsington tent, the trumpet-and-drum fanfare that opens Monteverdi’s Orfeo – in truth, the fanfare that opens the whole history of opera – wafted across to us from the lakeshore, summoning us to take our seats. Inside, Laurence Cummings and the musicians of the English Concert sat arrayed around a vision of pastoral nymphs-and-shepherds bliss remarkable for its economy of means: creamy white costumes amidst hundreds of thin strips of green cloth suspended from above, with a single, giant ring of light which would serve first as daylight and later, turned vertical, as the path between Hades and the mortal world.
If Robert Jones’ sets and Paul Pyant’s lighting did an exceptional job of getting us into the right frame of mind for Orfeo’s journey from lovesickness to the sweetness of requited love to the despair of loss, John Caird’s direction and Arielle Smith’s choreography were more remarkable still. Let’s be frank: not much happens in the first two acts of Orfeo, so on a bad day, it can drag fearfully. Here, there was no question of that: six dancers and a dozen or so singers were constantly in motion in patterns that ebbed and flowed to keep us fully engaged with the mood of the music. So well coordinated was the movement that it was often hard to tell which were singers and which were dancers.
The music was played superbly, with unerring feel for the balance between instruments, the shifting of pace and the need to make space for the singers. At one moment we could be in an energetic, foot-thumping dance; the next, we could be the Mantuan nobility listening to genteel entertainment; the next, we could be overcome by the grief of a lament – or the musicians might simply be serving as drivers of the story. The continuo instruments – theorbos, harp, harpsichord, chamber organ – were always present but never overpowering. Strings intervened energetically or plaintively. A recorder added the Arcadian flavour of a shepherd’s pipe; a pair of solo violins and then a pair of cornets created echoes. This was a highly accomplished rendering of Monteverdi.
The title role is by far the biggest and Ed Lyon was an appealing Orfeo, with a fair share of vocal beauty, plenty of vigour and good characterisation of each of the many moods. Otherwise, this is an ensemble piece, so I’ll only pick out a few names from an ensemble in which all the singing was of high quality. Diana Montague stole the show as Silvia (the messenger who brings the news of Eurydice’s death from snakebite): powerful, fervent, heartbreaking. Ossian Huskinson’s Pluto exuded authority with a growling bass that plumbed the depths.