Modern stagings of Baroque operas always are weird-looking, and this Italian version is no exception, opening with the fat cupids, and, where else could you find operatic firemen?

Bejun Mehta: Orlando
Sophie Karthäuser: Angelica
Kristina Hammarström: Medoro
Sunhae Im: Dorinda
Konstantin Wolff: Zoroastro

Baroque Orchestra B’Rock
Conducted by René Jacobs

Libretto here.

UPDATE
Judith Lown sends, The Mystery of Melody,

Melody may have its origin in human nature or in the realm of spirit, but, as we’ve noted, it is inflected differently in different cultures. Tonal systems vary dramatically; yet, though all these systems will qualify as music, not all can be described as melodic. It may well be that the Western imagination is specifically attuned to the reception of melody from its undocumentable source—at any rate, melody in its more elaborate, sophisticated and memorable aspects. The Bible is replete with references to song; the Greeks pioneered a plurality of melodic modes—Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, Lydian, Aeolian, whose intervals were based on mathematical ratios discovered by Pythagoras, which came to be known as “the fingerprints of the Gods”; and Church monophony eventually developed into lavishly harmonic and rhythmic polyphony. I am tempted to say that melody as it has been heard, cultivated, refined and transmitted is one of the signatures of Western civilization, an aural distillate of its essence.

Read the whole article.

Like Judith, “I’m finding that I spend more and more time streaming operatic concerts as a way of cocooning during this almost unbearable election cycle.”