Orfeo Ed Euridice & Zanetto

Poster for print and social media. Gluck’s famous opera Orpheus ed Euridice, featuring one of the world’s most loved arias, “Che faro senza Euridice,” retells the classic Greek tale of the poet Orpheus and his journey to the underworld to find and return his one true love. The woman appears to be in two worlds of the living and the dead. Narcissus (flowers of the underworld) intoxicate the woman. The second part of the evening featured Zanetto, by Puccini’s contemporary Mascagni, (Cavalleria Rusticana). Silvia, a rich and beautiful courtesan who both finds and renounces true love, strongly resembles her operatic cousin Violetta from La Traviata by Verdi and shares a similar fate. Both pieces feature love and a woman who falls in love with a poet/musician.