Orpheus in the Underworld Orpheus in the Underworld Orphée aux enfers, whose title translates from the French as Orpheus in the Underworld, is an opéra bouffon (a form of operetta), or opéra féerie in its revised version. Its score was composed by Jacques Offenbach to a French text written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux. The work, first performed in 1858, is said to be the first classical full-length operetta. Offenbach's earlier operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France did not allow full-length works of certain genres. "Orpheus" was not only longer, but more musically adventurous than Offenbach's
Orpheus (film) on dogmas. The region that I depict is a border on life, a no man's land where one hovers between life and death." When Eurydice is killed by Death's henchmen, Heurtebise proposes to lead Orpheus through the Zone (depicted as a ruined city – actually the ruins of Saint-Cyr military academy) into the Underworld in order to reclaim her. Orpheus reveals that he may have fallen in love with Death who has visited him in his dreams. Heurtebise asks Orpheus which woman he will betray: Death or Eurydice? Orpheus enters the afterlife by donning a pair of surgical gloves left