Review: Haymarket Opera and Newberry Consort link up for a rare ‘Euridice’

While resurrecting the oldest surviving opera, Haymarket Opera and the Newberry Consort built on more recent history.

Chicago hosted the American premiere of Jacopo Peri’s “Euridice” in 1967, when musicologist Howard Mayer Brown — an eventual co-founder of the Newberry Consort — organized a performance at the University of Chicago. As Brown told the Tribune at the time, he reconstructed the work from a first-edition print in Florence. It’s now housed at the Newberry Library, making a rare public appearance during a pre-performance event last month.

Prior to Brown’s research, music history surveys credited the dawn of opera to Claudio Monteverdi. Brown successfully argued that “Euridice,” composed for a Medici court wedding, more accurately holds the title of the oldest extant opera: Prem