Thinking about Orpheus

Mythmaking

“Myths are ‘mythic’ insofar as the story can be reworked to bring out the ideas and emotions that the teller wants to evoke while still maintaining the essential plot line of the story.” 

Love and Death

“One of the most terrifying things about death is the prospect of being separated—irrevocably—from those we love. The Orpheus myth provides an outlet for expressing thoughts and feelings about that timeless and universal problem.”

The Power of Art

“The Orpheus myth has a particular appeal for artists because Orpheus himself is an artist. So, any telling of the Orpheus story is also a way of talking about the power of art.” 

In Harmony

“Artists return to these materials because there is always something to be said, in each culture, in each generation, about these ideas.”

Hell on Earth

“I would be fascinated to see how the industrial setting of Hadestown plays out in the musical itself as a comment on our own era.”

Radcliffe Edmonds III is the Paul Shorey Professor of Greek and author of Redefining Ancient Orphism. Read more about his thoughts on Orpheus, the Tony Award-winning musical Hadestown, and the enduring power of myth.