Orpheus

Mythical Greek poet and musician of Thrace; the son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. Orpheus ventured into Hades, the underworld, to bring back his wife Eurydice, who had died from a snakebite. His lyre playing was so charming that Pluto granted her return to life, but on condition that Orpheus walked ahead without looking back. He turned at the entrance and Eurydice was irretrievably lost. In his grief, he offended the maenad women of Thrace, and they tore him to pieces.

His head and lyre were thrown into the River Hebrus, and carried out to sea to Lesbos. The Muses collected the remains of his body and buried them at the foot of Olympus, while Zeus placed his lyre in the sky as the constellation Lyra.

Orphic theology The mystery cult of Orphism, reputedly deriving from the poems of Orpheus, was concerned with death and the practice of secret rites to ensure entry into the afterworld of Elysium, or the Islands of the Blessed. Many poems ascribed to Orpheus were current in classical Greece; the existing verses bearing his name are forgeries, but some contain some genuine fragments of later Orphic hymns.

Orpheus

Ballet by Stravinsky (choreographed by George Balanchine) produced in New York, 29 April 1948.

Opera by Reinhard Keiser (libretto by F C Bressand). Part I: Die sterbende Eurydice was produced in Brunswick in 1699. Part II: Die verwandelte Leyer des Orpheus was produced in Hamburg in 1709.

Symphonic poem by Liszt, composed 1853–54 and first performed as an introduction to Christoph Willibald von Gluck's Orfeo at Weimar on 16 February 1854, with closing music on the same themes after the opera.

See Favola d'Orfeo, La; Malheurs d'Orphée; Orfeide, L'; Orfeo; Orfeo ed Euridice; Orphée aux enfers; Orpheus; Orpheus og Euridice; Orpheus und Eurydike.

Orpheus

Ballet in two acts by Hans Werner Henze (scenario by Edward Bond), produced in Stuttgart on 17 March 1979.

The suite for ballet, Apollo triofante, was performed at Gelsenkirchen, on 1 September 1980. The Arias of Orpheus for guitar, harp, harpsichord, and strings was performed in Chicago, on 25 November 1981. Dramatic Scenes from Orpheus for large orchestra was performed in two parts: no. 2 in Zurich on 6 January 1981, and no. 1 in Frankfurt on 12 September 1982. A concert version of the ballet was performed in Cologne on 4 March 1983.