Luxagraf

Probably my favorite myth — Orpheus. From the Guardian:

“This is the year of the return of Orpheus. It is 400 years ago that Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo was staged in Mantua. It was not quite the first opera, not even the first to tell the story of the demigod musician - but it was the first opera to last. Monteverdi’s contemporaries believed that actors in ancient Greece sang their parts, and so the new form was a conscious attempt to recapture what music meant to the ancient world: something that was not merely a skill, a display of virtuosity, but an enchantment, something that spoke to the soul, something deeply and sweetly natural. But when you choose to work with the Orpheus myth, you are even going beyond this: you are searching, in the dark, with your breath and your fingertips, for an art so powerful that, like the art of Orpheus himself, it can suspend or, as it may be, reverse the laws of nature.”

“The story of Orpheus was old when Ovid told it. In words, in music, in film, successive generations have worked it over, made it their own, every artist or would-be artist finding in it something personal and something new. When Eurydice, the bride of Orpheus, died of snakebite, Orpheus travelled to the underworld and used his skill in music to open the hearts of the gods, who allowed him to take back his beloved. One condition was made: that until they had left the underworld behind, Orpheus must not look at his wife’s face. He led her towards the light, then, at the last second, his desire defeated him; he looked back, and with that glimpse Eurydice vanished for ever.”

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