Orpheus: The Magic of the Arts

What is the enduring resonance of the myth of Orpheus from antiquity through the Renaissance and well into the 20th century, and in painting, sculpture, poetry, and music? This remarkable myth encompasses several dramatic moments – the supernatural power to enchant nature, the remarkable capacity to breach the Underworld in search of the beloved, the anguish of love lost, and the endurance of song beyond death itself. The myth holds the deepest most human fear of death and loss, as well as the powerful aspiration and hope in the transcendent enduring power of art.

Christoph Willibald Gluck’s achingly beautiful solo beseeching, “What will I do without Eurydice?” (“Che farò senza Euridice”) captures Orpheus’s heartbreak. In wild contrast a century later, 1858, Jacques Offenbach lampoons the mythic love story with an over-the-top parody that trivializes the mythic drama by depicting the poet as happy to be rid of Eurydice. Offenbach’s opéra bouffe is supercharged with the galop inferno dance that evolves into the can-can of popular dance halls at the end of the century.

Increasingly 19th- and 20th-century poets, painters, and composers turned from the love story to embrace the fundamental symbolism of the myth – Orpheus harbinger of civilization, archetypal artist, artist-priest. Narrative is pushed aside in favor of pure transcendent form, with non-representational music as the paradigm of this new art.  “There rose a tree. O pure transcendency / O Orpheus singing! O tall tree in the ear! (Rilke Sonnet to Orpheus, I)