Synopsis
The first opera of them all, Orféo tells of the supreme poet-musician and his wresting of his beloved Eurydice from the Underworld. For the time of the performance his song confounds the irreversible nature of death, but his love is put to the test and despite himself, Orpheus – victim of the human condition – is seized by doubt and fear. Destroying what his art had accomplished, he loses Eurydice forever. A semi-divine, semi-human figure inherited from Greek mythology, Orpheus became for the Renaissance humanists the very idea of culture: the perfection of his song turned uncouth men into civilised beings, and nothing inanimate could resist him.

Often evoked by poets and musicians as a symbol of the modernity of their language, Orpheus still represents today a questioning as to the nature of art and its place in society: the pull of the sacred, or the fascination of the pagan ?


Prizes and Awards
Not specified