Monteverdi's 'Orfeo' brought to sparkling life in Princeton

PRINCETON - Operas written at the dawn of the art form have blank-slate possibilities: Presented here on Wednesday under John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi's 1607 Orfeo was a time-travel experience from a world we can barely imagine, while also presenting a viable future model for how special-interest pieces can live outside the opera house.

The first great opera ever written, Orfeo is infrequently heard in the U.S., with only a handful of Philadelphia performances in the last 40 years. Presented by Scheide Concerts here, this outing with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists - part of a transcontinental tour alternating with Monteverdi's Vespers 1610 - avoided the challenge of staging gods and shepherds in the 21st century by putting most singers in black.

The piece itself is a crossroads, finding common ground between sacred and secular music, and on the cusp of the Baroque and Renaissance - qualities firmly underscored in Gardiner's 1985 Orfeo recording that's still an important milestone.

Yet Wednesday's performance had opposite objectives. Instead of succeeding on the accumulation of small, heterogenous elements, the musical mosaic that is Orfeo was homogeneously focused on Wednesday toward the piece's inner narrative - that of Orpheus losing Euridice on their wedding day, and going into the underworld to get her back. Passages that once had ceremonial tempos were played according to what singers need to make expressive points. When Krystian Adam sang Orfeo's searing laments, time seemed to stop.

Although ostensibly unstaged, the opera didn't feel that way with soloists and chorus performing by memory, some with 17th-century-style gestures, others moving with modern intuition. Francesca Aspromonte (La Musica) accompanied herself on guitar. In celebratory moments, singers who could dance did so. If there was a central concept, it was "Reveal thyself."

The cozy, in-the-round circumstances of Richardson Auditorium made this tour stop special: Singers addressed the audience at close range (perhaps like the opera's premiere, in what we'd call a ballroom). Lighting levels were high enough to allow audience members to follow the libretto - and avoid the us-and-them division between performers and listeners. When sections of the orchestra stood up for their important moments in the score, advantages were psychological as well as musical: They were like characters in the opera.

Clearly, Gardiner has evolved from a strict, Toscaninian figure to something Stokowskian, for whom effect is everything. Never did Orfeo need to be indulged for its age. Never did it feel antiquated. Bridging that 400-year gap has been Gardiner's life's work. And aren't we lucky to hear it?