husband’s fate, beginning at the moment she the muse of epic poetry. A poet, singer and falls back to the dark realm, losing her second oracle, before his marriage Orpheus had joined chance for life: “What madness, Orpheus, what the Argonauts to sing the beat for the oarsmen dreadful madness has brought disaster alike of the Argo, saving them from Scylla’s grasp. upon you and me, poor soul?”* Virgil and Ovid Animals, trees, even rocks were charmed by his were favorites of Renaissance artists and the music—the Roman poet Ovid said he could story of Orpheus and Eurydice played an make the Furies weep. Enchanted by Orpheus’ important role in the classical repertoire of the singing, Persephone allowed him to lead visual arts as well as the Eurydice out of the formation of early operatic Underworld on condition that performance at the he not look back at her as she Florentine and French followed behind him. Despite THIS PLAY RECASTS THE courts. A 1600 work based this warning, Orpheus halted NAMELESS GREEK NYMPH on Ovid’s version by Jacopo and turned, catching sight of FROM HER ROLE AS A WIFE Peri with libretto by Ottavio Eurydice just as they WHOSE DEATH WAS PART Rinuccini titled Eurydice was approached the upper world. OF HER HUSBAND’S FATE, In that moment his wife commissioned to celebrate TO A WOMAN SPINNING vanished before his eyes. the wedding of Marie de HER OWN FATE... Medici to Henry IV, King of The earliest surviving France at the Pitti Palace in reference to this myth is in Florence. This libretto had a Euripides’ tragedy Alcestis happy ending (it was a (438 BC), where he refers to wedding, after all): Orpheus and Eurydice the power of Orpheus to rescue his wife from returned home without incident and to great the Underworld—without once mentioning rejoicing! In 1607, Claudio Monteverdi’s La Eurydice by name. And while Orpheus appears Favola d’Orfeo followed the traditional plot and frequently in ancient Greek art: in vaseis seen to be the earliest fully realized opera to paintings used in symposia, in sculptural works have survived. associated with Orpheus’ cult of the afterlife and in elaborate mosaic floors of villas across Our contemporary production of Eurydice the ancient Mediterranean, Eurydice is rarely delves into the interstices of the myth, using the depicted, perhaps because she had only one character of Eurydice to explore facets of place story to call her own, or perhaps because her and memory left open by the ancients: What death was merely the catalyst for Orpheus’ was the Underworld really like to live in? Can most significant achievement. The tale was well music lead us there? Or, as Eurydice ponders in known in first century BC Rome, where among Ruhl’s play, “How do you say good-bye to many poets Ovid, in his Metamorphoses (Book yourself?” This play recasts the nameless 10, 1-85 and Book 11, 1-66) and Virgil (Georgics Greek nymph from her role as a wife whose 4: 453-527) expanded the narrative. Ovid’s poem death was part of her husband’s fate, to a relates the death of Eurydice but keeps closer woman spinning her own fate, including not to the life of Orpheus. Virgil, however, only a husband, but a father, a family, and a life emphasizes the role Eurydice played in her after death.
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Mary Louise Hart is Associate Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Villa, and a frequent presenter for LA Opera. *Translation of Virgil by H.R. Fairclough (1999)
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