The fully staged opera marks a new emphasis on vocal music

By John G. Funchion

“L’Orfeo” is based on the tragic Greek myth in which Orfeo attempts to rescue his wife Euridice from Hades.

Opera returns to Norfolk after nearly a 50-year hiatus with a fully staged production of Monteverdi’s “L’Orfeo.” Regarded as the world’s first great opera, “Orfeo” will kick off the 2008 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival in the Music Shed on Saturday, June 14. “L’Orfeo” was first staged in 1607. It is being presented here by the Yale Baroque Opera Project with the orchestra playing Baroque instruments and the cast and dancers appearing in period costumes. The Opera Project is funded through a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Yale Professor Ellen Rosand, the project’s executive director. Mounting “L’Orfeo” is a culmination of a year-long study by students taking courses that included vocal performance, continuo performance and the rhetoric of Baroque music. “We are thrilled to welcome classical opera back to Norfolk after an extended absence,” says Festival Director Paul Hawkshaw. “During the 1950s and 1960s, Norfolk was a hotbed for new operas and the cultivation of celebrated young singers such as Jan deGaetani and Helen Boatwright.” The opera marks a renewed emphasis on choral works that began with Hawkshaw’s appointment to lead the festival in 2004. Carl and Ellen Battell Stoeckel originally built the shed in 1906 principally as a showcase for the Litchfield County Choral Union, and Hawkshaw acknowledged this legacy with a production of the light opera, “The Pirates of Penzance,” in 2005. “L’Orfeo” will be under the stage direction of Ethan Heard assisted by musical directors Robert Mealy, Grant Herreid and Charles Weaver. There will be two performances on June 14, at 2 and 8 p.m. The opera is only one part of Hawkshaw’s determination to broaden the Festival’ program to include not only more vocal music, but informal lectures and the popular Listening Club, headed by James Nelson, the festival’s general manager. This year’s season will feature two notable special events. Superstar violinist Midori will appear in concert at on Sunday, July 13, and the Young Artists Recital on Saturday, August 2, will feature music from 250 years ago in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Town of Norfolk. The U.S. Coast Guard Band will perform in concert that evening in the Shed. Admission is free. The full 2008 season includes The Tokyo String Quartet returning to play concerts on July 5, 11 and August 9. The Hungarian Keller Quartet will take the stage on July 19. Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman will present a world premier of his new chamber version of Rautavaara’s Clarinet Concerto, and soprano Susan Narucki will perform the rarely heard “Poemes pour Mi” on Saturday, July 12. The season will close a with weeklong Chamber Choir and Choral Conducting Workshop led by King Singers founder Simon Carrington. A new composition for chorus and chamber ensemble by Joan Panetti will be premiered on Saturday August 16. Young Artist Recitals, always free, will continue in the Shed on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. and Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. beginning on July 3.