Orpheus

At the beginning of the history of music we find a myth: the legend of the Thracian singer Orpheus, whose singing is capable of enchanting nature, both animate and inanimate. Trusting to the power of his music, he ventures down into the underworld – a perilous journey for a mortal – in order to bring back his beloved Eurydice. Love and music are inextricably woven together in this primordial myth of an artist: Is it his unconditional love for Eurydice that moves the rulers of the underworld, or the captivating power of his lament? Is it excessive love that causes Orpheus’s quest to fail as he returns from the underworld, or is it the unbearable silence of a world without music that makes him take that fatal look back?

At the start of the opera Orpheus, Music appears in person to present the tragic love story of the eponymous hero. Or is the figure of music perhaps an embodiment of love itself? For two acts, nature and love are celebrated in singing and dancing, choruses and solos – until the carefree Arcadian mood is abruptly shattered by news of Eurydice’s death. But the music falls silent for a short moment only. Just as it was previously the expression of happiness and gaiety, so it now carries sounds of mourning and grief, turns into hope that accompanies Orpheus on his journey to the underworld, and right at the end, after the second tragic loss of the beloved Eurydice, music has the last word, or rather the last, consoling sound.