Orpheus Paris' Montmartre) in search of his fortune and ultimately to attempt the rescue of his doomed love. The film adapts a widely known piece from Jacques Offenbach's comedic operetta "Orphée aux enfers" ("Orpheus in the Underworld"), identified with the once-popular can-can music hall dance. Offenbach's operatic work had itself parodied the classical tale of Orpheus' attempted rescue of Eurydice from Pluto (Hades). Gavin Bryars' music for Édouard Lock's full length ballet "Dido and Orfeo" (2011) reworks music from the operas "Dido and Aeneas" (Purcell) and "Orfeo ed Euridice" (Gluck) for a small ensemble of saxophone, viola, cello and piano. Orpheus
The Corridor (opera) 26 part song cycle for countertenor, oboe and harp based on Rilke's "Sonnets to Orpheus". "The Corridor" focuses entirely on the moment in which Orpheus looks back at Eurydice, thus forcing her to return to the underworld forever. The opera's librettist, David Harsent, considers this one of the most brutal events in mythology: It might not have the direct physical brutality of the death of Acteon or the flaying of Marsyas, but the combination of folly and irreversibility make for something deeper than poignancy and more visceral than regret. "Corridor" was Harsent's third libretto for Birtwistle. The first two, "Gawain"