I love the stage version of Hadestown but Anais Mitchell’s original folk opera will always have my heart - not that it’s objectively better, she revised for years and it shows, but because the original is inscribed on the tablet of my heart and the one I have memorized through sheer repetitive listening.
I listened to it again recently and was struck by the fact that in “Wedding Song” Orpheus seems hopelessly naive in his assumption the birds, the river, the trees will provide what he and Eurydice need. It seems like such a contrast with Eurydice’s anxieties in the song and what seems at first like straightforward economic analysis in “Way Down Hadestown”
Every little penny in the wishing well
Every little nickel on the drums (on the drums!)
All those shiny little heads and tails
Where do you think they come from?
But we have already seen that Eurydice is at least as naive as Orpheus about the good of Hadestown- her first verse in the song is
Everybody dresses in clothes so fine
Everybody’s pockets are weighted down
Everybody’s sipping ambrosia wine
In a gold mine in Hadestown
Whereas Orpheus, in contrast, is remarkably clear-headed about what Hadestown entails, suggesting he made a choice to gamble on the vagaries of the overworld over the horrors of the underworld:
Everybody’s hungry, everybody’s tired
Everybody slaves by the sweat of his brow
The wage is nothing and the work is hard
It’s a graveyard in Hadestown
It’s only when Orpheus offers this clear rebuttal to Eurydice’s fantasies that she articulates (parrots?) her analysis of the source of wealth in their local community.
It reminds me so much of the ways defenders of capitalism defend the status quo- paint any thought of an alternative as utopic wishful thinking, present themselves as hard-nosed realists while simultaneously entertaining absurd fantasies of prosperity while ignoring the actual suffering capitalism requires and engenders. Of course, Eurydice isn’t a capitalist, just a defender of it, so she’s chewed up by the machine just like everyone else. I really admire how much compassion the story has for her even as she is this avatar of some of the worst parts of the system.
I love how much agency these choices give her as well- she’s not helpless, and if she’s a victim of anything then she’s a victim of propaganda whose choices seemed to her to be constrained, even as Orpheus offers her an alternative vision of the future. And of course, Orpheus doesn’t give up on her just like those hopeful for a changed system can’t give up on our siblings who have bought into capitalist lies. We love them too much to leave them to their suffering. Even if we can’t save everyone, and too often can’t save those we most desperately want to, it matters that we make the effort.
