Mackey & Treuting: Orpheus Unsung

Treuting, Jason; Mackey, Steven

Orpheus Unsung is an hour-long narrative for solo electric guitar and drums that traces the myth of Orpheus in the under world. Our hero Orpheus marries his true love Eurydice. Following the wedding, Eurydice is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus cannot bear this and embarks on a perilous journey to the underworld with the aim of bringing her back. Orpheus’s musical gifts are supreme, animals, plants and even stones, move in order to better hear him sing and play his lyre. He sings his plea to the ruler of the underworld who does allow him to take Eurydice back with him under the condition that he not look back to check to see if she is still there. When Orpheus crosses the threshold back to the surface he can no longer resist and he looks back but Eurydice has not yet crossed and she is immediately drawn back to the underworld, gone for ever. Orpheus mourns but eventually comes to terms with his loss. Later, a mob of Thracian women in a Dionysian Orgy rip Orpheus apart. Dismembered, his head and lyre float down a stream, his head still singing and his lyre still playing until they rest at the head of the stream and become an oracle. The hour-long piece is structured in 3 acts that delineate the three phases of the journey- above ground, travelling in the underworld and the return to the surface and the land of the living.

Price: $17.98

In stock
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