Oberon's Grove: Rehearsal: Cantanti Project's EURIDICE

Above: love triumphant as Euridice (Joyce Yin) and Orfeo (Aumna Iqbal) are reunited, to the delight of the nymphs. Photo by Travis Magee from a studio rehearsal of the Cantanti Project's production of Caccini's EURIDICE

~ Author: Oberon

Friday February 16th, 2018 - This evening, photographer Travis Magee and I stopped in at a rehearsal for the Cantanti Project's upcoming performances of Giulio Caccini's EURIDICE.

The earliest opera for which a complete score survives, this work is being presented by the singer-driven ensemble of the Cantanti Project on February 23rd, 24th, and 25th, 2018, at the Alchemical Studios,104 West 14th Street, here in New York City. For tickets, click here. Once on the order page, apply this discount code when ordering: EURIDICE5OFF. This code gives the user $5 off per ticket when two or more tickets are purchased.

Giulio Caccini got the upper hand on his rival composer, Jacopo Peri - who had already written his own EURIDICE in 1600, but hadn't gotten it published - by hurriedly preparing his own setting of Ottavio Rinuccini's libretto and getting it published six weeks before Peri's version appeared. Caccini's EURIDICE was first performed at the Pitti Palace, Florence, on December 5th, 1602.

Conducted by Dylan Sauerwald, with musicians from Dorian Baroque, the production is directed by Bea (Brittány) Goodwin, with costumes by Alexandria Hoffman. The singers are Michael Celentano, Tom Corbeil, Lydia Dahling, Daniela DiPasquale, Brittany Fowler, Marques Hollie, Aumna Iqbal, Fiona Gillespie Jackson, Elyse Anne Kakacek, Laura Mitchell, Joyce Yin, and Sara Lin Yoder.

In Caccini's setting of the immortal myth of the singer Orfeo, the hero descends to the underworld and pleads with Pluto for the return of his beloved Euridice, who has perished after having been bitten by a snake. Pluto's wife, Prosperina, takes Orfeo's side and persuades her husband to restore Euridice to life. Unlike the Gluck opera, where Orfeo fails to obey the command not to look at Euridice until they have left the realm of the dead - with dire consequences - in the Caccini setting the lovers return safely to their friends for a happy ending.