One of the most complex rock operas of the decade is Hadestown, conceptualized by musician Anaïs Mitchell and performed as a collaborative work with many artists and musicians. The rock opera has an apocalyptic, post-industrial Great Depression feel. In the words of Anaïs Mitchell, the work is meant to be a question about the limits of human compassion and cruelty:
Take global warming to its terrifying logical conclusion and imagine part of the world becomes uninhabitable and there are masses of hungry poor people looking for higher ground. [T]hen imagine you are lucky enough to live in relative wealth and security, though maybe you’ve sacrificed some freedoms to live that way. When the hordes are at the door, who among us would not be behind a big fence? These conditions exist already, but most of us don’t have to acknowledge them in a real way. (Themes of Hadestown, “History”)
The rock opera Hadestown uses the realm of Hades and its denizens in several ways. Firstly, it uses the landscape to highlight disparities of wealth and power among communities. Secondly, the connections it makes between characters — Hades and Persephone, Orpheus and Eurydice, and the restless dead — emphasize these connections and provide raw human emotions to fuel the changes that happen in the story. Finally, the mythological landscape utilizes the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in very unique ways, and we will explore all of these things here. This is the last of three posts. You can read the first and second ones here.
Only one thing to be done
Let them think that they have won
Let them leave together
Under one condition
Orpheus, the undersigned
Shall not turn to look behind
She’s out of sight!
And he’s out of his mind!
If you read the myth in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Books X-XI) or the texts that mention Orpheus and Eurydice in the Perseus Digital Library (primarily Apollodorus, but there are others) we see a myth that focuses on how Orpeheus’s heroism laid the foundation for the mysteries:
Now Calliope bore [...] Orpheus who practised minstrelsy and by his songs moved stones and trees. And when his wife Eurydice died, bitten by a snake, he went down to Hades, being fain to bring her up and he persuaded Pluto to send her up. The god promised to do so, if on the way Orpheus would not turn round until he should be come to his own house. But he disobeyed and turning round beheld his wife; so she turned back. Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been torn in pieces by the Maenads he is buried in Pieria. (Apollodorus, Library, Ch. 3.2).
Orpheus as the “prophet of our most sacred mysteries” appears even in court cases, and the renown he was given extended far beyond that of many other mortals (Demosthenes, Against Aristogiton). The pain of Orpheus is emphasized. In Ovid, Orpheus prays to descend for Eurydice a second time; he neglects himself and becomes a hermit in his anguish (Metamorphoses, Book X, ln. 103-122).
In Hadestown, the treatment of Orpheus and Eurydice is more equal, and the woman has the final word. While the myth Ovid relates begins at the wedding (Book X, ln. 1-11), the myth in Hadestown begins at the courtship. Eurydice, far from lovestruck, sensibly questions her lover’s intentions in “Wedding Song.” The song characterizes her poet fiancé as someone with his head in the clouds who has no idea how to realistically provide for the family. Even so, she marries him. “Hey Little Songbird” and “Gone, I’m Gone” follow Eurydice’s seduction into death, providing motivations and reasons beyond a simple serpent’s bite (and it is unclear whether a snake factors into the rock opera at all, making this a very stark deviation from mythological tradition).
Hadestown focuses primarily on relationships between people, and it skillfully separates the action of the myth into different sections. In Ovid, Orpheus sings one song to Zeus and Persephone; in Hadestown, “If It’s True” is primarily directed at Persephone, focuses on the despair of Orpheus and his frustration with the syatem; “Epic (Part II)” expands the middle of Orpheus’s song in the Metamorphoses (lines 36-43) to convince Hades to let Orpheus take Persephone. There is no discussion of a condition until the workers begin to riot. Hades’s final decision — that Orpheus cannot look at Eurydice on the way out of the Underworld — comes in a moment of personal desperation, and it is designed to sabotage the lovestruck poet.
The mysteries hardly factor into Hadestown at all. While we know in traditional accounts that Orpheus founded some really important Mysteries, the action in the rock opera ends when Orpheus turns behind. He is suddenly gone, and Eurydice is left alone. We do not follow Orpheus back to the world of the living to watch him pine away.
To conclude, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown uses the myth of Orpheus in some very innovative and unique ways. By de-emphasizing its importance to the creation of the Mysteries and the presence of Orpheus, it gives Eurydice a voice and endeavors to discuss the context of death and separation from her perspective. This more worldly tone is consistent with the emphasis on poverty and wealth discussed previously, along with the ways Mitchell characterizes the Gods and mortals who enter into the rock opera’s action.
Do I recommend listening to Hadestown? Definitely yes. And — if you can — I also recommend seeing it performed (which I have not). It is a very refreshing look at the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and will not disappoint most people.
Links
Places to Buy
Amazon.com
eMusic (subscription download site)
iTunes
