Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Consort & Players celebrate their 40^th anniversary with a magnificent recording of the world’s first operatic masterpiece, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. As can be expected from Andrew Parrott, who has been at the centre of the early and baroque music scene for over four decades, his meticulous research results in a performance and stylistic approach that brings a fresh perspective to the myth of love lost and found through the art of music. His scholarship, combined with the collaborative nature of the Taverners, translates into a performance brought to life by the finest singers and instrumentalists in the early music world, including tenor Charles Daniels who is the superb Orfeo. Befitting such an outstanding recording, the 2-CD set is luxuriously packaged with extensive notes and the complete libretto with English translations in a 60-page booklet.

“the Avie set favours near-vibrato-less singers of ambiguous fach - proper voices indeed (not the vernacular singing occasionally heard in Monteverdi) but not necessarily ones you'd typically hear in modern opera houses...More than usual, instrumentalists are active story-telling participants.” Gramophone

“We can hear Parrott's approach most clearly in Orfeo himself...Daniels reserves his emotional outbursts for a very few key moments...In the same vein, Emily van Evera does the tricky Messenger scene with chilling simplicity...'Possente spirto' - the highlight of the work - is a triumph...I'm not sure whether I'm more impressed by [Daniels's] techique of his formidable subtlety.” International Record Review

“Daniels is magnificent in the title role - technically brilliant...impassioned...and lyrically supple...The rest of the cast is also good...Faye Newton is a pure and effective Euridice...As one may expect from Andrew Parrott, the instruments are very adroitly deployed and controlled.” BBC Music Magazine