![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Keep on walking and you don't look back till you get to the bottomland
Anaïs Mitchell's Hadestown (2010) is an American folk opera of Orpheus and Eurydike and it is exactly as haunting as that description makes one hope.
By now the relevant people on my friendlist should know whether they want a copy or not, but I'll keep talking just in case.
The setting is the hard-up 1930's, or it's the penniless near future. Hades' realm is a mining town of glitter and grit where everyone owes their soul to the company store—remember that one of his titles is Πλούτων, the rich one—or it is actually the land of the dead. Eurydike's trip is one-way and underground. But she's not snatched from life unconsenting: like Cocteau's Orphée (1949), Hadestown posits a crisscross of love affairs between the worlds above and below. Eurydike is seduced down by Hades; Orpheus, following her, attracts the attention of Persephone. He ends like the myth, but it is Eurydike and Persephone who remember him together in the dark.
The result is not Tom Waits and neither is it O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), although neither of those models would have been a failure. It's a genuine opera; as much as Hadestown reminded me of Orphée, the way it retrofits ancient myth with the myths of a more recent time (the dust and diaspora of the Depression, the half-world of occupied France), I also thought more than once of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah. In true epic fashion, I'd love to see it reperformed. In the meantime, Mitchell herself is Eurydike; her Orpheus is Justin Vernon, singing the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The hobo Hermes is Ben Knox Miller of The Low Anthem, hanging around the old train depot, watching everyone come and go. The traditional place of the chorus is taken by Tanya, Petra, and Rachel Haden as the Fates, triplet sisters whose voices make one close harmony. Ani DiFranco is a speakeasy-swinging Persephone who gets up to all sorts of things behind her lord's back:
You want stars? I got a skyful
Put a quarter in the slot, you'll get an eyeful
You want the moon? I got her, too
She's right here waiting in my pay-per-view
And Hades is Greg Brown, whose The Iowa Waltz (1981) was the music I fell asleep to for years. On good nights, I'd go out like a light before my parents had to flip the record over; this is why I can still sing the title track, but mostly what I remember of "The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home" is the name. To hear him offering, in his deep, dark earth of a voice, the sensuality and security Eurydike cannot be guaranteed by her starving singer—
Hey, little songbird, let me guess
He's some kind of poet and he's penniless
Give him your hand, he'll give you his hand-to-mouth
He'll write you a poem when the power's out
Why not fly south for the winter?
—was slightly a violation of my childhood and awesome.
I realize I have said nothing about the music. It's whatever the story needs it to be: stomping blues, cool-eyed jazz, indie whispers, a wailing revival choir. I have no idea if it's characteristic of Anaïs Mitchell, because all I know of her other work is one song. I can tell you it's been on repeat since I took the plastic wrap off the CD. And now I have three retellings of Orpheus and Eurydike I love.
The smell of the flowers she held in her hand
And the pollen that fell from her fingertips
And suddenly Hades was only a man
With a taste of nectar upon his lips
Singing la, la, la, la, la . . .
By now the relevant people on my friendlist should know whether they want a copy or not, but I'll keep talking just in case.
The setting is the hard-up 1930's, or it's the penniless near future. Hades' realm is a mining town of glitter and grit where everyone owes their soul to the company store—remember that one of his titles is Πλούτων, the rich one—or it is actually the land of the dead. Eurydike's trip is one-way and underground. But she's not snatched from life unconsenting: like Cocteau's Orphée (1949), Hadestown posits a crisscross of love affairs between the worlds above and below. Eurydike is seduced down by Hades; Orpheus, following her, attracts the attention of Persephone. He ends like the myth, but it is Eurydike and Persephone who remember him together in the dark.
The result is not Tom Waits and neither is it O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), although neither of those models would have been a failure. It's a genuine opera; as much as Hadestown reminded me of Orphée, the way it retrofits ancient myth with the myths of a more recent time (the dust and diaspora of the Depression, the half-world of occupied France), I also thought more than once of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah. In true epic fashion, I'd love to see it reperformed. In the meantime, Mitchell herself is Eurydike; her Orpheus is Justin Vernon, singing the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The hobo Hermes is Ben Knox Miller of The Low Anthem, hanging around the old train depot, watching everyone come and go. The traditional place of the chorus is taken by Tanya, Petra, and Rachel Haden as the Fates, triplet sisters whose voices make one close harmony. Ani DiFranco is a speakeasy-swinging Persephone who gets up to all sorts of things behind her lord's back:
You want stars? I got a skyful
Put a quarter in the slot, you'll get an eyeful
You want the moon? I got her, too
She's right here waiting in my pay-per-view
And Hades is Greg Brown, whose The Iowa Waltz (1981) was the music I fell asleep to for years. On good nights, I'd go out like a light before my parents had to flip the record over; this is why I can still sing the title track, but mostly what I remember of "The Train Carrying Jimmie Rodgers Home" is the name. To hear him offering, in his deep, dark earth of a voice, the sensuality and security Eurydike cannot be guaranteed by her starving singer—
Hey, little songbird, let me guess
He's some kind of poet and he's penniless
Give him your hand, he'll give you his hand-to-mouth
He'll write you a poem when the power's out
Why not fly south for the winter?
—was slightly a violation of my childhood and awesome.
I realize I have said nothing about the music. It's whatever the story needs it to be: stomping blues, cool-eyed jazz, indie whispers, a wailing revival choir. I have no idea if it's characteristic of Anaïs Mitchell, because all I know of her other work is one song. I can tell you it's been on repeat since I took the plastic wrap off the CD. And now I have three retellings of Orpheus and Eurydike I love.
The smell of the flowers she held in her hand
And the pollen that fell from her fingertips
And suddenly Hades was only a man
With a taste of nectar upon his lips
Singing la, la, la, la, la . . .
no subject
no subject
no subject
It turned out to be not what I had hoped for. I had hoped it would be the entire album cast, performing. Instead, it was just Anais Mitchell... singing all the parts (though the background orchestra was there, and they were fabulous).
It's just NOT the same to hear one singer singing all the parts, even if she's talented--it's ridiculous in a song that's in dialogue, for instance. So, a little disappointing.
I'd go in a flash if the ever put on a show with the cast from the album, though.