In Antonio Sartorio’s Orfeo (Venice 1673) Orpheus entered “with a lyre in his hand,” but he sang the aria that moves the wild beasts to the accompaniment of four-part strings. Le Carnaval de Venise by André Campra (Paris, 1699) presented the story of Orpheus as a play within a play. Orpheus descended into the underworld accompanied by a “sweet symphony” of two flutes plus continuo; he then addressed Pluto to the accompaniment of two violins. In J. J. Fux’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Vienna, 1715) Orpheus’ lyre became an ensemble of pizzicato violins and cellos. Gluck in both the Italian and French versions of his Orpheus and Euridice (Vienna, 1762; Paris, 1774) gave Orpheus an entire orchestra of his own –– an offstage ensemble of four-part strings and harp –– while the Furies, who bar his path to the underworld, were accompanied by a second orchestra of strings, woodwinds, and trombones 5. Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf wrote a program symphony on the subject of Orpheus and Euridice, which was performed in Vienna in 1786. Here both the singer and his lyre were represented by instruments: Orpheus by a solo violin, the lyre by the rest of the orchestra 6. Haydn too composed an Orpheus opera, L’anima del Filosofo, written for the King’s Theatre in London, and rehearsed but never performed. Haydn’s Orpheus tamed the wild beasts in Act I to the accompaniment of pizzicato strings and harp.

The size and make-up of the ensembles that played at the first performances of all eleven of the Orpheus settings above can be determined, at least approximately, from pay records, reports, and other archival materials. Table 1 shows not just the instruments that represented Orpheus’ lyre but instruments that played at any point in the work. In the 191 years between Peri’s Orpheus and Haydn’s the instrumental ensembles for Orpheus operas changed a great deal. Earlier ensembles emphasized keyboards and plucked strings, while later ensembles were based on bowed strings and tended to contain more winds. Unfamiliar instruments in the early ensembles –– lira grande, cornetto, basse de violon –– were replaced by instruments that are the direct ancestors of those still in use today. The balance of instruments within the ensembles also changed. Violins increased as a proportion of strings; violas decreased; there were more winds. Finally, Table 1 suggests that instrumental ensembles grew considerably larger during the two centuries between 1600 and 1791.

At the beginning of the published score to his Orfeo Monteverdi printed a list of 33 “Stromenti” required to perform the work. Charles Burney, historian and chronicler of music, looked at Monteverdi’s list and opined that “the orchestra . . . for the performance of this drama was greatly superior to that of [Peri’s] Euridice ...7” John Hawkins, Burney’s contemporary and rival, looking at the same list, concluded that each singer was accompanied by a different group of instruments and that therefore “no accompaniment of a whole orchestra was required 8”.

Were the instruments that accompanied Monteverdi’s Orfeo an orchestra or not? If an orchestra is simply a large number of instruments assembled together for a performance, the thirty-three instruments in Monteverdi’s list seem like more than enough to be an orchestra. But then the marching band at an American football game would have to be considered an orchestra too, and so would a Balinese gamelan or a hundred Suzuki violinists playing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” in unison. On the other hand, if an orchestra has something to do with what kinds of instruments play, the balances between different kinds of instruments, and how the players of these instruments interact with one another, then perhaps Monteverdi’s Orfeo ensemble was not an orchestra after all, because the instruments in it functioned in ways quite different than they did in later orchestras. Most of the opera was accompanied by the keyboards and plucked strings, improvising their music from the basso continuo part; bowed strings and winds were used only for dances and special effects. Some of the instruments played behind the scenes, others at the side of the room; others appeared onstage 9. The ten bowed string instruments on Monteverdi’s list played one-on-a-part most of the time, rather than as a section. And Monteverdi did not designate the instruments in his score with a corporate noun like “cappella” or “orchestra”; rather he called them “stromenti,” that is, instruments or instrumentalists.