We're gonna party like it's 1607

The current (March 9) issue of The Week magazine mentions that Italy celebrated the 400th birthday of the opera with a new staging of Monteverdi's "Orfeo," first staged in Mantua in 1607. "Orfeo" was a very early opera, not the first or the second, The Week explains, but "the first to be adopted by performers elsewhere." The Feb. 24 performance in Arizona of William Duckworth's "iPod Opera 2.0" (also based on the Orpheus myth), noted earlier in this blog, was timed to fall on the 400th anniversary of that first performance of "Orfeo." If you missed the earlier posting, information here.