Musically, this "Orfeo" is very well done (...) Much of the succes of the performance was surely due to the conductor, Hartmut Haenchen, who treated the orchestsra like a period-instrument band yet still got a rich sound from it. With pit raised so the players were nearly at stage level, the blend of orchestra and voices, at least from a seat in the orchestra section, was just about ideal. Ideal too was Haenchen's ability to maintain propulsive tempos without any loss of expressivity.