Living legend: Why the Orpheus myth refuses to die

The story of Orpheus is one of the very first to marry music and love. Orpheus was given his lyre by its inventor, the god Apollo, who some Ancient Greek authors believed to be Orpheus' father. Other early writers gave him an earthly sire, but claimed his mother was Calliope (one of the muses), and that she was responsible for his musical talents.

Orpheus sailed alongside Jason as an Argonaut, according to Apollonius of Rhodes, and without his music, the Argonauts would have been lured to their deaths as they tried to sail past the island where the Sirens dwelt.

By Natalie Haynes

But Orpheus' music was more beautiful than the Siren-song, which had no effect on men who could hear Orpheus play the lyre. Pindar, in his fourth Pythian Ode, calls him 'aoidan pater': the father of song.

But Orpheus is best known not for his talents or courage, but for his tragedy.

Orpheus loves Eurydice, but on their wedding night, she is attacked by a satyr, determined to rape her. In The Georgics, the Roman poet Virgil names this satyr as Aristaeus. It's a cruel name for such a creature, with its connotations of excellence (aristos means 'best' in Greek).

Eurydice flees in panic and stumbles over a snake. It bites her foot, and the poison kills her moments later. Orpheus is demolished by grief. So he follows his wife down to the Underworld, and bargains for her return.

A katabasis - the act of going down into Hades while still alive - is carried out by very few heroes. Orpheus placates Cerberus, the three-headed dog, with his music, and then softens the cold, hard heart of Persephone.

Eventually, Hades offers his famous bargain: Orpheus may return to the warm light of day, and his wife can accompany him. But he must never look back, or Eurydice will be lost a second time.

It is a fiendish offer: Orpheus loves Eurydice enough to walk into the bowels of hell for her. But he can only have her back if he trusts the word of a god who took his beloved too soon.

Such passionate love is not - cannot be - accompanied by blind faith and Orpheus fails. He has almost returned to the light when he can no longer bear the silence behind him and looks back.

Eurydice is promptly sucked back to Hades, and Orpheus is left with a redoubled tragedy: his wife is gone - this time for good - and it was his own action which condemned her to a second death.

He never recovers, and in the most famous version of his story, he finds himself attacked by a crowd of Maenads. The wild women tear him limb from limb and only his head is left, singing as it flows down the river Hebrus.

The story cries out to be reworked in every medium, and it has been: painted by Titian, sculpted by Rodin, filmed by Cocteau (as The Orphic Trilogy). It has been dramatised by everyone from Jean Anouilh (Eurydice) to Simon Armitage (Eurydice and Orpheus), via Tennessee Williams (Orpheus Descending).

It has been turned into a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, in the Sandman universe (part of the Fables & Reflections collection), where Orpheus is the son of Gaiman's hero, Dream. It has evolved into opera and music written by everyone from Gluck to Nick Cave.

These writers, painters and sculptors were surely all drawn to the peculiar viciousness of the tragedy: Orpheus and his music can take him further than any other mortal man could have gone, to try and bring back his beloved.

But not only is that not enough, it's the very thing which destroys him: a lesser musician would surely have lacked the cruel imagination which torments Orpheus until he cracks and looks behind him. In Gaiman's version, we see Eurydice, her lovely hair with a bright streak running through it, literally fade from Orpheus' sight.

The story was even dramatised by Jim Henson, who (between Muppets) made The Storyteller, a series of Greek myths, in 1990, starring Michael Gambon as a teller of tales.

In this version, Orpheus was played by a young Art Malik, who captured perfectly the liminal nature of Orpheus, occupying the space between art and tragedy, god and man, life and death.

But tropes of the Orpheus story have spread like the notes from his lyre, even when the tragedy itself is put aside: in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, for example, Harry has to find a way past Fluffy, a three-headed dog, if he is to find the stone before his nemesis. Fluffy doesn't just resemble Cerberus in terms of the number of heads they each have. He is also distracted - lulled into sleep, in fact - by music.

The transcendent power of art will always be the core of Orpheus, as much as his poor, broken heart.