The Mask of Orpheus Orpheus must travel through is given a symbolic name. At the start of this act, time is moving backwards: Orpheus travels back out of and into the Underworld, and Euridice dies once more. Then time moves forwards as Orpheus leaves the Underworld again. One version of the Orpheus story is that he is then killed by a thunderbolt thrown by Zeus, while another is that he is dismembered by the women of Dionysus. Orpheus then becomes the subject of a cult and an oracle. Time flows backwards once more, and Orpheus' death is acted out again, and the opera ends
Orpheus Descending (film) Orpheus Descending (film) Orpheus Descending is a 1990 American television film starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by Peter Hall. It is an adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play of the same name. Hall had directed Redgrave in an acclaimed Broadway production of the play a year earlier. The stage actors such as Redgrave, Kevin Anderson and Brad Sullivan reprised their roles for the film. Lady Torrance (Redgrave) is introduced as a disillusioned character; her Sicilian father was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan and she's been trapped in a miserable marriage for twenty years. Her tyrannical and bigoted husband is struck