About the work
Hadestown is a musical with music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell, developed with director Rachel Chavkin, premiered in 2016 (Off-Broadway, then Broadway in 2019). The work won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and grew out of Mitchell's concept album of the same name.
Plot
In a world between a New Orleans jazz bar and a mythic underworld, Hadestown interweaves two ancient Greek myths: the love of Orpheus and Eurydice and the marriage of Hades and Persephone. When the starving Eurydice makes a pact with the industrialist-god Hades and descends into his subterranean factory Hadestown, the penniless musician Orpheus follows to bring her back with the power of his song—under the famous, fateful condition that he must not turn around on the way up.
Cultural significance
Hadestown blends folk, jazz, and blues into a distinctive musical world and retells the Orpheus myth as a parable of hope, poverty, and the courage to keep singing despite foreseeable failure. The work, written single-handedly by a woman and staged under Rachel Chavkin's direction, was hailed as an artistic triumph. Songs such as Wait for Me and Why We Build the Wall gave the work political and timeless resonance.