L'Orfeo

Has anyone heard Monteverdi's first opera and one of the earliest surviving operas? I purchased the box set some months ago and still hear it frequently. It's truly beautiful and has a very special pastoral mood. Does anyone know it as well?

Amazing piece of music! I studied it in depth last year in an opera class I was taking and fell in love with it right away. "Act 1, Rosa Del Ciel ... Lo Non Diro" is of sublime beauty, as are "Act 2, Tu Sei Morta" and "Act 3, Possente Spirto". I strongly recommend this to anyone who hasn't heard it yet.

On a side note, one of the most beautiful love duets that I'd ever heard (let's leave the fact that there is some debate as to whether Monteverdi actually wrote the piece) is "Act 2, Pur Ti Miro, Pur Ti Stringo" from L' Incoronazione di Poppea.

Despite my love of and specialty in early music, I've had trouble developing a taste for Montiverdi's secular work. I have a really fine recording on vinyl of Nicholas Harnoncourt and his people doing "Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria," and I listen to it from time to time to see if I appreciate it more with age and experience. Someone lent me a recording of "Poppea," and while I found it very sophisticated and beautiful, it failed to move me. Something about Italian music of the early 17th Century feels at once too static and too "free" to me, if that makes any sense.

I did recently perform a Montiverdi madrigal that I found enjoyable, and I appreciate his sacred music.

as are "Act 2, Tu Sei Morta" and "Act 3, Possente Spirto"

Tu Sei Morta = Greatest Opera Tenor Solo in 17th Century