L'orfeo

Monteverdi: L'Orfeo (2004) Ian Bostridge, Patrizia Ciofi, Alice Coote, Natalie Dessay, Veronique Gens, Le Concert d'Astree. Emanuelle Haim Ian Bostridge's account of the title role is musical enough too, and always intelligently stressed, but the words never for a moment sound as if they have anything to do with Italian as a spoken, living language. But that was and remains an essential ingredient of L'Orfeo; it may have been an opera on a mythical subject (Monteverdi did not portray flesh-and-blood characters in his surviving stage works until the very last, L'Incoronazione di Poppea), but the emotions it deals in are real enough, and its overarching themes - the transforming power and limitation of art - have never been explored more profoundly or pithily in the 390-odd years of opera since. Digital ReMastering/Reissued.