Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria

After the wake of L'Orfeo last season, and after almost 15 years, another of the key titles of Monteverdi's production on human fragility, subject to powers such as Fortune, Love and Time, returns to the Teatro Real with the orchestra I Gemelli. With song as a dramatic device, Monteverdi adapts the adventures and misadventures of Ulysses narrated by Homer in his Odyssey.

Ulysses is a hero whose destiny is do battle — with hostile gods, with hostile monsters, with hostile men— and fight against irrational and superhuman powers to restore something as basic as family unity or his own identity. It is also a complex myth as we are unable to separate it from many others:  the hope of his son Telemacus, the impatience of his nursemaid Ericlea, the fidelity of his swineherd Eumetes or — above all — the indecision of his wife Penelope, on which the crux of the story coils and, on whom, in short, the outcome depends.

Written when the composer was over seventy, the score is a whole compendium of the art of Monteverdi where the persuasive eloquence of L’Orfeo, the warlike effects of Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda and the lyricism of his Scherzi musicali resonate.

It also includes the first character who is clearly buffo — the «parasite » Iro— in the history of opera. As well, it is also the first to represent the problematic psychological development of his protagonists both in musical terms and in their human complexities.  

Dramma per musica in a prologue and three acts

Music by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

Libretto by Giacomo Badoaro, based on the Odyssey by Homer

Premiere at Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venecia in 1640

Premire at the Teatro Real on 17 April 2009

Concert version

Orchestra conductor: Emiliano González Toro

Cast

L'Humana Fragilita: David Hansen

Tempo/Antinoo: Nicolas Brooymans

La Fortuna/Juno: Lysa Menu

Amore/Minerva: Emoke Baráth

Penelope: Fleur Barron

Ericlea: Alix Le Saux

Melanto: Mathilde Etienne

Eurimaco: Álvaro Zambrano

Neptuno: Christian Immler

Giove/Anfinomo: Juan Sancho

Ulisse: Emiliano González Toro

Eumete: Nicholas Scott

Iro: Fulvio Bettini

Telemaco: Zachary Wilder

Pisandro: Anders Dahlin

I Gemelli