Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(55)

He is, however, perfectly happy to criticize Orpheus for the lesser calibre of his sacrifice. Phaedrus isn’t impressed with Orpheus’ musical skill, his ability to charm the shades of the Underworld, to exert the power of persuasion on Persephone and Hades. For Phaedrus, Orpheus is weak because he didn’t die for love.

Now this may reflect the prejudices of the author rather than the views of the character. Plato is wildly intolerant of many forms of artistic expression. Only the writing of philosophy is really acceptable in his view: other types of creativity are intrinsically suspicious. But it reveals an interesting attitude which we haven’t seen in our other sources: Orpheus’ problem is not that he loves Eurydice so much he can’t help but break the restriction and look back at her. His problem is that he doesn’t love her enough to have died of it. And so Orpheus is found wanting by the gods, just as much as by Phaedrus, at least as far as Plato tells it. He doesn’t deserve Eurydice, so he doesn’t get her. According to this version of their story, he never has a chance: the Eurydice this Orpheus sees is a mere ghost rather than a reclaimable woman.

Alcestis, of course, is not a ghost when she is returned to Admetus. But she is veiled and mute, so she has a somewhat ghostly quality. Even when Admetus can see her and accept that she has returned to him, he’s perplexed that she will not speak. It’s Heracles who tells him that she is still sacrosanct to the gods of the Underworld, and that she must remain silent for three days. This, of course, takes us beyond the temporal confines of the play.

In another playwright’s hands, we might assume that the author was simply not interested in Alcestis’ response, or that – as with so many male writers before and particularly after Euripides – the author didn’t think very much about women and so didn’t bother to write them any dialogue. But, as I’ve said elsewhere in this book (and will continue to say whenever the opportunity arises), Euripides is one of the greatest writers of female voices in antiquity and, frankly, in the history of theatre. He is always interested in the perspectives of women, and there is little he enjoys more than giving them fantastic speeches to thrill, distress or horrify his audience. When Alcestis comes back, she raises a question that the play chooses not to answer. Is this what she wanted? She is the eponymous hero of the play, but has her heroic deed – dying for love – been overshadowed by Heracles’ heroic deed in wrestling with Death and winning? And, of course, in the days to come we might assume Admetus and Alcestis will be very happy together: given a second chance by the gods because of the power of her love and sacrifice. But surely there might be moments in the dark hours of the coming nights when Alcestis looks across at the sleeping form of her husband and wonders how much she can still love a man who so overtly cared more about himself than he cared about her. Alcestis has a happy ending compared to most tragedies, but perhaps that’s just because the play ends before the real tragedy has time to play out.

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It’s curious that the story of Eurydice and Orpheus is so much better known to us than the story of Alcestis and Admetus, when in classical Greece it seems to have been the other way round. We have no record of Eurydice’s name, even, until an obscure work called Lament for Bion, which was probably written in the first century BCE. It was once thought to be by a slightly earlier poet, Moschos, but is now generally agreed to be by an unknown southern-Italian writer.23 It is perhaps three hundred and fifty years after Alcestis was first performed in Athens, three hundred years since Phaedrus found Orpheus’ love for his wife to be wanting in Plato’s Symposium. But only now does Eurydice have a name, when this poet explains that Persephone allows Orpheus Eurydice’s return.24 Her story certainly begins in Greece, and it’s impossible to say for certain when she acquired her name. But our first example of it is from this poet, whose name in turn is unknown to us. Pseudo-Apollodorus also mentions Eurydice by name in his Bibliotheca25 a couple of centuries later. Again, as with the earlier versions of her story, she dies when she is bitten by a snake. Orpheus wins her back with his lyre-playing, as usual, but this time it’s Pluto rather than Persephone who imposes the condition of not looking back. And he is even more demanding than his wife: in this version, Orpheus cannot look at Eurydice until they have made it all the way to his house.

We can see hints and echoes of these multiple ancient versions of Orpheus and Eurydice’s story in some of their many operatic incarnations. Gluck’s 1774 opera, Orphée et Eurydice, has more than a touch of Alcestis to it. It is a reworking of the composer’s earlier version with a libretto by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, who would also later write the libretto for Gluck’s Alceste. The opera initially follows the story we know so well: Eurydice’s death, Orpheus’ descent to the Underworld, the return, the look, the second loss of Eurydice. But then, touched by their devotion and despair, the god of love appears and reunites them once again. Love is triumphant, as the libretto says. And unlike Alcestis, this Eurydice never has to wonder if her husband might not love her as much as she loves him: he loves her enough to follow her to Hades, loves her enough to panic and fail, and then loves her enough for the gods themselves to intervene. A truly happy ending.

Meanwhile, in Philip Glass’ bonkers 1993 opera, Orphée, based on Cocteau’s 1950 film of the same name, the proviso about not looking back at Eurydice until long after they have left the Underworld is picked up and played with still further. In the ENO’s 2019 production,26 as in the film, Orpheus and Eurydice couldn’t look at each other even once they were back in their home. The story of tragic lovers takes an unexpected swerve into slapstick. Eurydice hides behind doors, Orpheus ducks under tablecloths, all to avoid the fatal gaze. They fail – of course; how could they not? – and Eurydice is reclaimed by the Underworld. In Offenbach’s 1858 operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld, Eurydice doesn’t even merit having her name in the title: an echo of those earliest Greek versions of her story when she goes unnamed. And yet, the opera focuses more on Eurydice than her husband, not least because she gets to dance the can-can in Hades in Act Four.27