“Eurydice is a luminous retelling of the Orpheus myth from his beloved wife’s point of view. Watching it, we enter a singular, surreal world, as lush and limpid as a dream—an anxiety dream of love and loss—where both author and audience swim in the magical, sometimes menacing, and always thrilling flow of the unconscious… Ruhl’s theatrical voice is reticent and daring, accurate and outlandish.” —John Lahr, New Yorker A reimagining of the classic myth of Orpheus through the eyes of its heroine. Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice journeys to the underworld, where she reunites with her beloved father and struggles to recover lost memories of her husband and the world she left behind.

Newly-discovered evidence underpins this comprehensive account of the creation and staging of the earliest surviving 'opera', Euridice.

In this richly illustrated study, the Viennese reform of opera and ballet is placed in the context of Christoph Gluck's decade-long involvement with the city's first French theatre, established in 1752. Following a detailed examination of the institutional and cultural frameworks of theatrical life in Maria Theresia's capital (drawing upon important new documentary sources), and of the interaction between Parisian and Viennese repertories, each of the areas of Gluck's activity in the Burgtheater--concerts, opera-comique, and ballet--and their products are examined in turn. Such masterworks as Orfeo ed Euridice and Don Juan are shown to be intimately connected with the regular musical repertory of the French theatre, which was itself rich in innovation; in addition, a large number of works by Gluck (and his colleagues) are identified and analyzed here for the first time.

Father Lee is internationally known for his commentaries on opera. This book gathers his best commentaries and articles on 23 works for the musical stage, from the pioneering Orpheus of Monteverdi to the forward-looking Ariadne of Richard Strauss.

A collection of 18 essays on musical theatre in the eighteenth century, written between 1967 and 2001

This collection of essays, presented by an internationally known team of scholars, explores the world of Vienna and the development of opera buffa in the second half of the eighteenth century. Although today Mozart remains one of the most well-known figures of the period, the era was filled with composers, librettists, writers and performers who created and developed opera buffa. Among the topics examined are the relationship of Viennese opera buffa to French theatre; Mozart and eighteenth-century comedy; gender, nature and bourgeois society on Mozart's buffa stage; as well as close analyses of key works such as Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro.