Greek mythology has long been a source of inspiration for artists, seducing countless writers, musicians, filmmakers and poets with its rich parade of heroes, victims, lovers and angry gods.
And one of the all-time favourites is the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. The ill-fated lovers have featured in operas, books, sonnets, films, TV shows, sculptures, video games and paintings. And songs. So many songs. From Nick Cave and Sara Bareilles to Arcade Fire and Rick Springfield, the list of performers is as long as it is varied – in both genre and quality.
Anais Mitchell first came across Orpheus and Eurydice in a children’s illustrated book.Credit: Jay Sansone
And now the story is having another moment in the popular imagination. We’ve just had Jeff Goldblum playing a deliciously Trump-esque Zeus in the brilliant (and sadly un-renewed) Netflix Series KAOS; a well-received work from choreographer Sue Healy, Afterworld was one of the highlights of the recent Sydney Festival; and Opera Australia’s upcoming innovative production of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice.
Next week Hadestown, Anais Mitchell’s Grammy-winning “folk musical”, opens in Sydney.
Just like London buses, apparently, you don’t see an Orpheus and Eurydice adaptation for a while and then a bunch come along all at once.
For those arriving late (and bearing in mind there are plenty of variations on the details), here’s the quick version: Orpheus is a supernaturally talented musician, who has a magic lyre. He falls for Eurydice, a wood nymph, who is promptly bitten by a snake and dies. Ever the optimist, Orpheus refuses to give up his love and pursues Eurydice to the Underworld where he charms Hades, god of the dead, with his music. Hades agrees to let Eurydice return to the land of the living on condition Orpheus walks ahead and does not look back. However – spoiler alert – he couldn’t resist a peek and, let’s just say, things do not end well for either of them.
Vermont-born singer-songwriter Mitchell recalls coming across Orpheus and Eurydice in an illustrated children’s book of mythologies.
“I remember being drawn to it,” she says. “I can still picture the illustration. Then I encountered the story a few more times. I remember watching Black Orpheus [the 1959 Marcel Camus film] maybe in high school and another film called Orphee [1950, Jean Cocteau]. There’s something about it that always drew me in.”
After leaving school, Mitchell began making her way as a singer-songwriter and Orpheus came along with her.
Sue Healey’s Afterworld is a meditation on life and death.Credit: Wendell Teodoro
“Back then, I identified with this young man who is sort of a dreamer and comes up against the rules of the world and wonders if they can be changed. You’re all set for this Hollywood ending, and then you don’t get it. There’s something about that I think that keeps people coming back.”
Award-winning Sydney choreographer Healey has also long been fascinated by the story.
“The myth is definitely beyond time and place because it’s a tale of life and death,” she says. “What more basic can you get? Just intense love and then loss and grief. There are so many different readings, but for me, the story is about the power of art to conquer death and about the power of music to overcome reality.
“Orpheus is allowed to go into the Underworld to bring the love of his life back, but it’s only because he can charm the gods with the sheer power of his music. Given the complexity of today, I think we need to understand that art can be a vehicle for us to understand the world better.”
Healey’s dance work Afterworld is a meditation on life and death featuring the music of Australian drummer and composer Laurence Pike and inspired loosely by the Orpheus and Eurydice story. The work was originally to feature Healey’s friend and collaborator Eileen Kramer but was given extra poignancy when Kramer herself died aged 110 before the first performance.
Janet McTeer as Hera and Jeff Goldblum as Zeus in KAOS.Credit: Justin Downing/Netflix
“It is a re-imagining of the myth and by no means a straight narrative,” says Healey. “I came to the story through Laurence Pike’s album The Undreamt-Of Centre. As soon as I heard the music, I was hooked. And then both my parents died, so suddenly death was a reality and the idea of a requiem or ritual around this threshold of death seemed absolutely necessary for me.”
For Mitchell, the first fragment of what would eventually turn into Hadestown arrived, fittingly, in an almost magical fashion around 2005.
“It was really mysterious,” she says. “It was early on in my songwriting career, and I was driving from one gig to another at night and the melody for Wait For Me [one of the key songs in the show] just kind of dropped from the sky. It had some language with it which has long been cut from the song, but it seemed to be about this story.
“I thought, ‘Oh, what the hell is that?’ And I got excited then about the idea of telling a longer form story with songs.”
‘I’m blown away by the way the piece seems to make its own way in the world.’
Anais Mitchell
It took a dozen years, a DIY community theatre project and a studio album before the full-stage version of Hadestown emerged, eventually scooping eight Tony Awards and a Grammy. Its success remains something of a mystery for Mitchell
“I’m blown away by the way the piece seems to make its own way in the world,” she says.
While Orpheus and Eurydice are central to Hadestown’s narrative, their doomed love also shares billing with the difficult relationship between Hades and his wife (and niece – it’s complicated) Persephone.
“It’s not simply the Orpheus story,” says Mitchell. “It really is the tale of two couples and the question of whether there can be redemption for this older, ancient couple.”
One of the biggest numbers in the show, Why We Build a Wall, has coincidentally – or perhaps presciently – developed fresh relevance in the Trump era. In the song, Hades tells his workers the wall they are building is there to keep them free from poverty – the “enemy” beyond the wall.
“It’s this call and response rally between Hades who is building a wall to sort of create jobs and also to keep out the riffraff from this land of relative wealth and security,” says Mitchell. “When I wrote it in 2006, it felt like it was an archetypal song. It was a mythic song. It could apply to various places. And then when Trump came along everyone thought that this song was about him but in fact he was tapping into the same mythology.”
Quite what lessons we are to take away from this mythic tale that has fascinated and inspired so many artists is far from clear – and maybe that is the point.
For Sydney University’s Craig Barker, a classical archeologist with an interest in mythology, there is “something for everyone” in the story, with Orpheus representing both the power of the arts and the limits of that power.
“But I also think it nicely encapsulates Greek mythology, full stop,” he adds. “That no matter how much humans try we are still at the mercy of the gods.”
Mitchell prefers to give it a more positive spin.
“I think the takeaway is that you have to try,” she says. “Orpheus is not a hero because he succeeds, he’s a hero because he tried. It’s not that trying leads to success per se it’s that trying is how to live.”
Hadestown is at the Theatre Royal from February 10 to April 19.