Music by Claudio Monteverdi
Libretto by Alessandro Striggio

Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe, New Mexico
July 29-August 24, 2023

Orchestration: Nico Muhly (World Premiere)
Conductor: Harry Bicket

Director: Yuval Sharon
Visual Environment Designer: Matthew Johnson and Alex Schweder
Lighting Designer: Yuki Nakase Link
Projection Designer: Hana S. Kim
Sound Designer: Mark Grey
Costume Designer: Carlos J. Soto

Yuval Sharon made his Santa Fe Opera company debut with a new production of Claudio Monteverdi's 1607 opera Orfeo. Commonly regarded as the oldest surviving opera, Orfeo tells the timeless story of the legendary musician's descent into Hades to win back the life of his deceased bride. Harry Bicket conducted the world premiere of Nico Muhly's orchestration, which updates Monteverdi's Baroque-era instrumentation.

Sharon's Orfeo united innovative stagecraft, practical effects, and the physical environment itself to advance the drama of the opera. In an effort to portray the two worlds of Orfeo, while accounting for the theater's lack of a proscenium, Sharon aimed for a staging that would allow both to flourish onstage seamlessly. Finding inspiration in astronomical devices of antiquity such as the astrolabe, Sharon's team devised a solution: one single set piece that can open and close to reveal a hidden underworld, the movements of which are inextricably connected to the world of the living above.

Sharon’s production also invokes another major element of the opera: music itself. As both a character and a major driver of the action, music takes center stage in Orfeo; Sharon sought ways to bring it to life in the set that reflected its pervasive presence in the opera. Using projections and mist, Sharon’s Orfeo gives form to music by visualizing the air that carries it. In doing so, he also evokes Orfeo’s travels through a land beyond human comprehension.

Photography by Richard Barnes.