Pluto (mythology) designed a set with a rotating mountain that opened up to reveal Pluto emerging from the underworld; the drawing survives and was the basis for a modern recreation. The tragic descent of the hero-musician Orpheus to the underworld to retrieve his bride, and his performance at the court of Pluto and Proserpina, offered compelling material for librettists and composers of opera (see List of Orphean operas) and ballet. Pluto also appears in works based on other classical myths of the underworld. As a singing role, Pluto is almost always written for a bass voice, with the low vocal range representing
Pluto uses "Sao Diêm Vương", which was derived from the Chinese term 閻王 (Yánwáng), as "minh" is a homophone for the Sino-Vietnamese words for "dark" (冥) and "bright" (明)). Some Indian languages use the name Pluto, but others, such as Hindi, use the name of "Yama", the God of Death in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. Polynesian languages also tend to use the indigenous god of the underworld, as in Māori "Whiro". Once Pluto was found, its faintness and lack of a resolvable disc cast doubt on the idea that it was Lowell's Planet X. Estimates of Pluto's mass were revised downward