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PAN PIPES • WINTER 2016 • sai-national.org 14 WOMEN IN OPERA Don't Look Back: A Eurydice Retrospective C D E I J K N O P T U By Madelaine Matej In my sophomore year at University of the Pacific, I was honored to be cast in my first ever leading role, Eurydice in Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld. I spent hours learning my music and practicing my staging, all the while seeking to understand the character better. But as time passed, I became more frustrated with her. ere simply was not much substance to the character. She seemed perpetually trapped in unfortunate relationships with increasingly powerful men— each time she sought to escape by flirting with a new man, she would fall prey to his will and become newly restricted. e operetta is comic, certainly, and by the end Eurydice has chosen to spend all eternity with the god of wine. But in the character herself, I found mostly frustration and loneliness. I knew the story had originated as a Greek myth and that Gluck had also written an operatic version. I wondered whether Eurydice had ever had more substance than she did in Offenbach's setting. My question launched me on a two-year research project, taking me on train rides and psychotic bus trips through Italy and Germany to study the style of earliest Italian opera. I ordered scores from all over the world. I compiled a spreadsheet as large as my living room floor and a seven-page bibliography. I spent hundreds of hours translating obscure operas from French, German, and Italian to English. Out of this, I created the most complete existing list of operas on the Orpheus and Eurydice legend and an original lecture-recital that traces Eurydice's characteristics from the year 1600 to the year 2000. I presented the lecture-recital as my honors senior project at University of the Pacific on October 30, 2015. e following are excerpts from the lecture. e story of Orpheus and Eurydice originated in ancient Greek and Roman times, first written in the third century B.C. by Apollonius of Rhodes and revised by Roman poets Virgil and Ovid. In the last years of the 16th century, when composers sought to recreate Greek theater, they chose this story and others similar to set to music. is effort accidentally produced a new genre, which we now call opera. Orpheus and Eurydice was the basis for two of these earliest operas and has since appeared in 79 total operatic works. Actually, Orpheus appears in two myths — one known as "Orpheus and Eurydice" and the other as "Death of Orpheus." e plot of the first story, "Orpheus and Eurydice" is approximately as follows: Orpheus, a demi-god, can charm anything with his music. He falls in love with the nymph Eurydice, and aer a time, they marry. While frolicking in a field, she dies from a snakebite. Orpheus descends into the underworld, charming all his obstacles by singing and playing his lyre. He appeals to Pluto (also known as Hades) and Persephone to return Eurydice to him temporarily — only until death by old age reclaims her. All of the underworld is moved to tears, and Pluto/Hades allows Eurydice to follow Orpheus out of the underworld on Ken Howard, Met Opera A scene from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice performed by the Metropolitan Opera in 2011. Eurydice "set the standard for the feminine voice in opera" Alexandra Amati-Camperi, musicologist

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