Several Composers such as Monteverdi, Gluck, and Offenbach have set the Orpheus Myth in many different ways for the Opera or Operetta Stages.
The premise is pretty simple, really:
Boy meets girl.
Boy marries girl.
Girl gets bitten by snake.
Girl gets dragged off to Hell as she dies from snake bite.
Boy, so sad, and still in-love with girl mourns the loss.
Boy decides to go rescue girl from Hell.
Boy sings some songs, the gods feel sorry for him.
The let him take the girl back to earth...
...under one condition...
Boy can't talk to, or even look at, the Girl on the trip back home.
The Girl sees the boy's silence as "ignoring her" and she starts to nag.
Boy turns to Girl to tell her to stop nagging.
Ooops! She dies instantly.
Boy begins to mourn the loss of the girl, again.
One of Boy's family, or a god, or someone else feels sorry for the Boy again...
...and gives him back the girl.
Love triumphs over Death.
The End.
Sure sounds like an opera plot to me! Several composers have set the basic Orpheus Myth to music, starting with Claudio Monteverdi and running through present day modern composers such as Phillip Glass. Today, we look at 3 of these different Orpheus settings and let you decide which you like better.
I invite you to look at the settings by: Monteverdi, Gluck, and Offenbach. Monteverdi's very serious straight forward telling of the story, Gluck's more dramatic approach to the emotional context of the story, and Offenbach's tongue-in-cheek parody of the story all approach the myth in a different way, but all have their place in the great history of Opera.
When you're done reading up on the articles, make sure you take this poll about which story you would prefer to see!
