Story By Robert Viagas

Matthew Patrick Quinn, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Chibueze Ihuoma, Nathan Lee Graham, Hannah Whitley and company in the Hadestown North American Tour 2022. Photo Credit: T Charles Erickson, 2022

THE HOPE-FILLED LEGEND OF HADESTOWN

STORY BY

Robert Viagas

Tonight’s production of Hadestown has been 2,500 years in the making.

This Tony Award-winning musical is an adaptation of the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice. This ancient Greek legend has been rewritten, retold and updated down through the centuries as plays, operas, movies and even a previous musical, Craig Lucas’ Orpheus in Love.

Why does everyone love this tragic story? Here is a man who loves a woman so much that when she suddenly dies, he literally descends into hell, determined to fetch her back.

What is Orpheus’s scheme? The gods gave him the most beautiful singing voice of any mortal. He plans to charm the stewards of hell with his exquisite vocals so they will allow him to take back his love.

Is that a natural idea for a musical, or what?

That’s what Anaïs Mitchell thought. Born in Vermont in 1981 to a novelist

father and a state official mother, the precocious Anaïs (named for the writer Anaïs Nin) began writing songs in high school. She won a national folk competition at age 22. She released her first solo album, “Hymns for the Exiled” in 2004, but was soon at work on a project of the heart, a song cycle based on the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Writing not just music and lyrics but also the book, Mitchell created a fresh conception of the god Hades, the terrifying lord of the underworld, whom she imagined as a driven businessman in charge of a grim underground industrial collective, which he calls “Hadestown” in this version. His wife Persephone loves her supernatural husband but doesn’t much like to live in hell, so she spends half of each year with him in Hadestown—giving the mortal world autumn and winter—and half the year on the surface—giving us spring and summer.

Hearing Orpheus’s magical singing voice, Hades is persuaded to make this once-in-eternity exception to the law of death—but he has a condition. Orpheus may lead his beloved Eurydice out of Hadestown, but he must never look back at her as he does so—no matter what he may hear or see on the way out. If he does turn around, even for a glance, the whole deal will be off. Can Orpheus do it? You’ll find out tonight!

The concept came quickly to Mitchell but it took 12 years in a Sisyphean quest to bring her project to a larger audience. She shared the songs in a series of concerts and staged performances in Massachusetts and Vermont in the late 2000s, and she gathered them into a concept album in 2010, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. In 2012 Mitchell connected with director Rachel Chavkin who helped her mold the work for a full staging. In May 2016 the show was presented by New York Theatre Workshop—the offBroadway company that originated RENT and many other influential new works. They continued developing the piece further. Lauded productions followed in Edmonton, Canada, and London before things finally came together for a Broadway production in spring 2019.

The show’s long road came to a climax when Hadestown was named Broadway’s Best Musical in the 2019 Tony Awards, winning a total of eight awards out of 14 nominations, including Best Score for Mitchell. The Broadway original cast album won the 2020 Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album.

With the new North American tour, Hadestown now resumes its odyssey here in Charlotte.

Chibueze Ihuoma in the Hadestown North American Tour 2022. Photo Credit: T Charles Erickson, 2022