INHABITING as it does a very different place from that of ‘Opera’ today, the world's earliest operatic masterpiece richly repays the attempt to understand it on its own terms. With a libretto entirely in verse and a setting which eschews verbal repetition, L’ Orfeo relies predominantly on a form of recitative designed to enable each character ‘almost to speak in music’ (as Caccini put it) and to be intelligible at all times. As a consequence, high vocal extremes are absent and ranges modest (Orpheus himself barely exceeds a 12-note compass); pure vocal display is reserved for just two key moments; and nothing demands unnaturally big voices, not least because there is no ‘orchestral’ accompaniment for the solo singers to ride.

Monteverdi's stated aim (as voiced by his brother) was ‘to make the word mistress of the music and not its servant’, and the present performance treats his and Striggio's telling of the Orpheus myth as essentially poetic (rather than theatrical), as a refined courtly creation and, not least, as being of an intimacy utterly foreign to later ‘grand’ opera and to almost any large public arena. The sala in which L’ Orfeo was first presented – probably with what we might regard as minimal staging – is estimated to have had a floor area of less than 30 × 40 feet. The two dozen or more instrumentalists may well have all been hidden from the audience (as for L’ Arianna in 1608), with one half of the string body constituting an offstage band (playing ‘within’) and continuo instruments stationed in left and right corners of the stage, in close contact with the singers.

Those who embark on performing L’ Orfeo are immediately confronted with an exceptional range of practical issues, some of them common to most early Italian music of the period (such as those of continuo style, ornamentation and rhythmic fluidity), others specific to this extraordinary composition. What follows can only hint at a few of these.

Pitch Several differing pitch standards were in use around Italy in the early 17th century, often within a single city and even within a single church. Today's a’ = 440, adopted for this recording, falls somewhere in the middle of the known possibilities and is a very plausible ‘Florentine’ pitch (between high Venetian and low Roman).