‘The two great gifts of the Greeks to humanity, said the poet Hölderlin, were Orpheus-Love and Homer-Song.’ The great German poet’s statement shows him as belonging to our own phase of Western civilisation. For us Orpheus — born probably a generation before Homer, who never once mentions him — is eminently a lover. His grief at his wife Eurydice’s death (generally ascribed to snake-bite) drove him to the Underworld itself, to find her and bring her back. His love for her made him accept the harsh injunction never to look at her during their return-journey — and, tragically, caused him also to disobey it. ‘I can restrain myself no longer’, he cries out in Gluck’s ravishing opera of 1762, and consequently sees her die again. ‘Che faró senza Euridice?’ What shall I do without Eurydice?’ he laments in one of the most loved arias in the repertoire.
