Orfeo 1968Edinburgh University Opera Club
Read more about the opera Orfeo
The newly-established Edinburgh University Opera Club got off to a flying start with this Scottish premiere of the earliest regularly performed opera. The recent Sadler's Wells staging had been played in Italian - there not being yet an acceptable English version - and the students bravely followed that example.
The pit band consisted of sixteen players, led by Miles Baster (first violin of the Edinburgh String Quartet), and there was a continuo group of five. There was also a chorus of twenty-one, including several of the small-part soloists, and two principal dancers. There is no credit for scenery, but then the stage is shallow with little scope for anything elaborate.
Performance Cast
- Musica
- Pastore I First Shepherd
- Pastore II Second Shepherd
- Pastore III Third Shepherd
- Pastore IV Fourth Shepherd
- Ninfa a Wood Nymph
- Orfeo
- Euridice
- Messaggiera a messenger
- Speranza Hope
- Caronte Charon, ferryman to the Underworld
- Proserpina wife of Pluto
- Plutone Pluto, Lord of the Underworld
- Spirito I First Spirit
- Spirito II Second Spirit
- Apollo