Orfeo

Orfeo is the Italian form of Orpheus, a central figure in ancient Greek mythology renowned as the greatest of mortal musicians. According to most accounts he was the son of the poet-muse Calliope and either Oeagrus or Apollo, and he could charm animals, trees, and rocks with his lyre and voice. His song also had prophetic and magical powers in some versions of the myth.

The core story concerns his wife Eurydice, who dies soon after their wedding. Orfeo travels to the underworld, where his music moves Hades and Persephone, who permit Eurydice’s return to the living world on the condition that Orfeo not look back at her until they reach the surface. He looks back too soon, and Eurydice is lost to him forever. In other versions, Orfeo is later killed by the maenads, and in some accounts his head and lyre are carried by river nymphs to the island of Lesbos; his cult survives as that of an exemplary musician and poet.

Orfeo has had a lasting influence on literature and the arts. In music, he appears in two of the most influential operas: Claudio Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) and Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). The figure also informs later works and the broader Orphic or Orphic Mysteries tradition in ancient religion.

See also: Orpheus, Orphism, L’Orfeo, Orfeo ed Euridice.