Orphée aux Enfers

Jacques Offenbach’s »opéra bouffon« opens not with the bride’s obligatory death during the wedding ceremony of Orphée and Euridice but with the personal squabbles  of a married couple whose happy days have long been a thing of the past: Their respective affairs with shepards and nymphs seem to amount to a divorce. The state of their married life is the reason, why Orphée is, at first, quite happy to allow his wife’s lover Pluto to kidnap Euridice and to lead her straight into Hades, the kingdom of the dead. It is only when the “Public Opinion” turns against him and threatens to ruin his reputation that Orphée is prepared with gritted teeth to enter Hades in order to bring back Euridice.