Document Type
Perspectives on Performance
Abstract
Haydn’s last opera, L’anima del filosofo (The Soul of the Philosopher), is a highly unusual retelling of the Orpheus myth. Written for London in 1791 to a libretto by C. F. Badini, the opera was never staged during the composer’s lifetime. Shut down in rehearsal and banned from performance, the opera never reached the stage because many of its themes—including the apocalyptic storm at the end—piqued British anxieties towards events unfolding in revolutionary France. The opera finally premiered in 1951, with Maria Callas singing the role of Euridice. Universal Edition prepared the performing material from sources photographed behind the Iron Curtain; but the publishing firm forbade broadcasts of performances, silencing Callas and curtailing wider dissemination. Subsequent European productions by Joan Sutherland and Cecilia Bartoli helped promote the opera, but Jürgen Flimm’s directorial vision for Bartoli’s theatrical performances with Harnoncourt and Hogwood is both mystifying and visually troubling. North America, meanwhile, only saw concert performances of this remarkable Orfeo.
This article by the conductor/keyboardist and dramaturge/producer, who brought Haydn’s Orfeo to the stage in North America in 2023, offers new insights into the mature Haydn’s musical and theatrical talents. Orfeo benefits from a deeper appreciation of Haydn’s skillful use of late-eighteenth-century musical rhetorical styles and a better understanding of the opera’s problematic reception history. An intelligent staging that foregrounds the myth and failed liberation while also emphasizing themes of warmongering and environmental degradation—both of which resonate with modern-day audiences—further inform our understanding of the opera’s many strengths, showing this tender, timely, and utterly terrifying work in new light.
Recommended Citation
Bandy, Dorian and Clark, Caryl
(2025)
"Reassessing Haydn’s Orfeo in the Theatre,"
HAYDN: Online Journal of the Haydn Society of North America: Vol. 15, Article 2.
Available at:
https://remix.berklee.edu/haydn-journal/vol15/iss1/2
© Haydn Society of North America ; Boston: Berklee Library, 2025. Duplication without the express permission of the author and/or the Haydn Society of North America is prohibited.
