YMMV / L'Orfeo

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Since both Charon and Hades are bass roles and appear shortly after another, some productions have them played by the same actor and imply that Charon is Hades in disguise as one of his servants.
• Awesome Music: As the first truly landmark opera that's still performed today, its staying power is primarily through the amazing music.
  • In Act II, after the opera up to this point has been a happy celebration of Orpheus and Eurydice's wedding, the messenger Sylvia reveals the terrible news that Eurydice has died. Monteverdi went out of his way to ensure that the music drove home the sudden change of mood, and even 400 years after the opera's premiere and the story being common knowledge, the music makes it horrifyingly tragic and sad.
  • Charon's introduction in Act III is done with intimidating music and a powerful bass voice as he refuses Orpheus entry to the Underworld. Orpheus's responsive aria, "Powerful Spirit," is one of the hallmarks of the entire piece as he pleads through five separate stanzas for leniency, each with a different backing instrument and a different tactic to try and win him over.
• Nightmare Fuel: In David Bösch's production, the flowers jutting out of the stage raise to the ceiling for the Underworld acts and their roots are revealed to have human heads at the bottom. The spirit dancers all look like Eurydice except with a Skull for a Head, and the Mood Dissonance of the happy music and chorus playing over the altered ending, where Orpheus cuts his wrists and joins Eurydice in a shared grave, makes for unnerving viewing.
• Once Original, Now Common: When opera was first emerging in the early 17th century, at the beginning of the Baroque period, recitative was revolutionary for being able to translate human speech (and human emotion) naturally into music. By the end of the Baroque period, recitative was mainly used to quickly cover large blocks of dialogue between arias. Operas like L'Orfeo can sound odd to the modern ear because they're from the brief period before recitative became so common it was relegated to getting the boring stuff out of the way.

---