Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’Orfeo, premiered in 1607, is based on the myth of Orpheus.
The first performance took place in Mantua on 24 February 1607 for the Accademia degli Invaghiti. The libretto was written by Alessandro Striggio and recounts Orpheus’s journey to the underworld to recover his dead wife, Eurydice.
L’Orfeo is one of the earliest operas still regularly performed today. Monteverdi used a notably varied instrumental ensemble and assigned instruments distinctive dramatic functions, helping establish musical practices that shaped the development of opera.
The work is sometimes called La favola d’Orfeo, meaning “The Fable of Orpheus.” It should not be confused with Monteverdi’s later L’incoronazione di Poppea, which concerns the Roman emperor Nero and Poppea rather than the Orpheus myth.