Orpheus und Eurydike Orpheus und Eurydike Orpheus und Eurydike ("Orpheus and Eurydice") is an opera by Ernst Krenek. The German text is based on a play by Oskar Kokoschka. Kokoschka began writing his play during his convalescence (from wounds received on the Ukrainian front in 1915) and it premiered in 1921, one year before Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus appeared. In 1923 he let it be known that he was looking for a composer to write incidental music. Kokoschka's expressionist, psychological treatment of the Orpheus myth, marked by his passion for Alma Mahler, appealed to Krenek so he approached Kokoschka. They quickly decided that
Orpheus and Eurydice be with his love, he mocked the deities in an attempt to visit Hades, to get her back alive. As his love was not "true"—meaning that he was not willing to die for it—he was punished by the deities, first by giving him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld and then by having him killed by en. Apollo gives his son Orpheus a lyre and teaches him how to play. Orpheus played with such perfection that even Apollo was surprised. It is said that nothing could resist his beautiful melodies, neither enemies nor beasts. Even trees