Post #7: Orpheus and Eurydice

Hello! Welcome back to our adaptation study! Today, I wanted to take a look at a case study of one story, and how different adaptations take it on. I thought this would be an interesting way to look at how different creators and mediums adapt the same story, but then I realized that the chosen story for today is itself a myth, a Greek myth, so the independent variable is itself variable. Anyways, today, we examine the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, and it’s adaptation in Baz Lurhmann’s 2001 musical film, Moulin Rouge!; Anaïs Mitchell’s 2019 stage musical, Hadestown; and Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, (original French title: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.

A word on myths: as a genre, myths exist in a space where they are neither fiction, nor non-fiction. They are also not a singular work—myths exist as folklore, often told by oral tradition, or otherwise living in a cultural sphere where many different versions of myths are disseminated. I will try to speak about the original myth with the most popular and general version of the myth to be as accurate as possible. 

A still from Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film, Moulin Rouge!, featuring Nicole Kidman as Satine and Ewan McGregor as Christian. (Image source)

In the original Greek myth, Orpheus, son of Apollo and a muse and a gifted musician that can move anything and anyone who hears his musical talents, and Eurydice get married. Eurydice gets bitten by a serpent and dies at the wedding. Then, with will to see his bride again, Orpheus descends to the Underworld. There, he plays a song for Hades, and Hades, moved by his musical talents, offers that Orpheus can save her if they follow in a straight line back out of the underworld, one in front of the other, with Orpheus in the front and not to look behind at her; if he does, the deal is off. They do, and at the last moment he does, turn around and look, and Eurydice is swallowed by darkness. It is a tragedy. In many ways, the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice does what humanity wants more than anything—to recover that which is lost to time, to see again those we love who have died, the impossible, and ending in grief. 

A still from Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film, Moulin Rouge!, featuring Nicole Kidman as Satine and Ewan McGregor as Christian. (Image source)

Baz Lurhmann’s 2001 jukebox musical film, Moulin Rouge! is set in 1900 Paris at the Moulin Rouge, a cabaret defined by its famous windmill iconography. Orpheus is Christian, a young English poet/writer, and Satine is a courtesan who stars at the Moulin Rouge. (Get it? It’s Christian and Satine… Christ and Satan…) The film itself is concerned with the tension between business interests and the ideals of “Freedom, Truth, Beauty, and Love”, the artists’ bohemian ideals—a very wishy washy revolution, but a revelation of the heart. The musician and innocent Christian descends into the Underworld—here, the crass performing world of the Moulin Rouge—to rescue his beloved, Satine, who is chained to the world as the star courtesan and a woman trying to achieve agency, independence, and financial freedom. The ending features a musical performance on the part of the characters, where the Christian and Satine persevere beyond the show’s investor’s, who was trying to court Satine, attempts to kill them both. The musical swells and ends, the curtain falls, Christian turns to Satine with a face of hope, ready for them to exit the Moulin Rouge together and free, and Satine falls in his arms and dies of tuberculosis. The ending is…bizarre; however, in adapting the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, Luhrmann adapts the concept of the permanence of death to tension between bohemian artistic ideals and the “real” world bound in capital and adultery. The film is a jukebox musical that uses popular songs to create a musical that truly engages a contemporary audience in using familiar tunes. 

A picture taken of Anaïs Mitchell’s 2019 stage musical, Hadestown. (Image source)

In a different vein, Anaïs Mitchell’s 2019 stage musical, Hadestown, adapts the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, as well as the tale of Persephone and Hades, into an anti-capitalist and environmentalist theatrical setting. Here, Hades’ Underworld is depicted as an industrial factory, and the “dead” as laborers working there; Hades himself functions as a Trumpian character, singing a song “Why We Build the Wall” at the end of Act I that Mitchell prophesied so perfectly when writing it in 2006: 

Because we have and they have not

Because they want what we have got

The enemy is poverty

And the wall keeps out the enemy

And we build the wall to keep us free

That’s why we build the wall

We build the wall to keep us free

A picture taken of Anaïs Mitchell’s 2019 stage musical, Hadestown. (Image source)

I find Hadestown absolutely captivating in the elusive, ephemeral, simplistic yet hypnotic imagining, through visual imagery in lyrics and the subtle staging of natural and industrial aesthetics, of the world we exist in. The musical champions the idealism of Orpheus, especially in the final number, “We Raise Our Cups”:

Some flowers bloom

Where the green grass grows

Our praise is not for them

But the ones who bloom in the bitter snow

We raise our cups to them

 

A still from Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, featuring Noémie Merlant as Marianne (left) and Adèle Haenel as Héloïse (right). (Image source)

And turning to a non-musical adaptation, Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire adapts the myth for a late-eighteenth century French setting, where a painter is tasked with painting a portrait of a young woman, by her mother, to send to her suitor in Italy; the young woman does not wish to get married, so the painter must first examine and watch her during the daytime and then retreat to her room and paint her from memory. The painter, Marianne, eventually reveals her task to the young woman, Héloïse, and they eventually grow to be friends, and then lovers. Towards the middle of the story, the two read the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice from a book out loud in their free time. As their romance grows stronger, Marianne sees, twice, the image of Héloïse, standing in a brilliant white gown, in the hallway, her image fade in bright from black, and then out back to black just as quickly. Héloïse eventually must leave to get married to her Italian suitor, and Marianne, having finished her portrait, must leave Héloïse’s abode. As Marianne leave’s the house’s front door in the morning, she hears Héloïse say “Turn around”, and sees Héloïse standing in her wedding dress; her image fades to dark as Marianne closes the front door on her. It is a truly moving moment. 

A still from Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, featuring Adèle Haenel as Héloïse. (Image source)

In a way, I don’t aim to say much in this blog post. I hope that through my descriptions of the three adaptations, you can gather some sort of internal understanding for how a story can be adapted in different ways, and the power and tension of new settings of stories. Medium, genre, contemporary socio-politico-cultural settings, and plot all play a role in adaptations, and they interact in interesting and captivating ways. I highly encourage you to watch Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Thank you for reading! 

Sources: Edith Hamilton’s book, Mythology. Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 film, Moulin Rouge!. Anaïs Mitchell’s 2019 musical, Hadestown. Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, (original French title: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu.