Synopsis
A woman descends into the Underworld.
ACT 1
It is the morning after the night of Orpheus and Eurydice’s wedding. A night of love that ended tragically with the bride’s death. Orpheus wakes to find himself alone in an asylum. He is immersed in his grief and his guilt. His hold on reality is tenuous. The room fills with phantasmal images and creatures. Amor (love) appears. She looks exactly like Eurydice. She may or may not be real. She grants Orpheus the chance to descend into the Underworld to rescue Eurydice. The condition is that he doesn’t look at Eurydice until they return.
ACT 2
Orpheus meets the Furies. Through the beauty of his song he charms them into allowing him to pass. He arrives in Elysium and sings of its wonders. We see Eurydice surrounded by the blessed spirits. Orpheus and Eurydice reunite.
ACT 3
Years have passed in the Hades that is Orpheus’s fractured imagination. Eurydice won’t leave. Orpheus won’t look at her or tell her why. They are stuck in a hell inside heaven. Eurydice pleads and Orpheus relents. He looks at Eurydice, who dies. Orpheus is bereft, realising all is lost. His world further dislocates from reality and Amor and Eurydice return, funerals and weddings meld into a celebration of the triumph of love, which is death.