Original subtitles

(dramatic orchestral music)

- [Narrator] Once upon a time there was a musician.

His voice it was said, possessed extraordinary powers.

It was as sweet as honey, as warm as gold,

as strong as the strongest of metals.

It charmed the hearts of mortals

and could soften even the most hard hearted of men.

When Orpheus took up his lyre and plucked its strings,

the wolf trotted beside the lamb,

the fox ran beside the hare.

At his approach, the rivers changed

their course in order to listen.

The very rocks and stones

would rise up from the ground and sway.

It is even said that the gods themselves on certain nights

leaned down from the top of Mount Olympus

in order to hear him sing.

(majestic music)

Orpheus however, was not quite a god.

He was in fact a demigod.

His mother was indeed Calliope,

the muse of poetry and eloquence,

but his father was a mortal named Oeagrus,

who was the king of Thrace.

When Orpheus was born,

Apollo, the god of light and the protector of poets,

laid a lyre at the foot of his crib.

Not just any lyre, a magic lyre with special powers.

Outfitted with nine strings,

nine in honor of the nine muses.

As a result of this gift, a rumor arose.

Could the newborn child actually be the son Apollo himself?

(dramatic music)

Orpheus grew up surrounded by the muses.

Together they took the young boy under their wing,

and taught him to play music,

to write, to compose, and to sing.

Orpheus learned quickly.

As a child, he was already making the trees

of the primeval forest dance to his tunes.

The ancient oaks of Greece have never forgotten them.

Some have remained frozen forever

in the pause of their last dance.

His irresistible songs celebrated the creation of the world,

the origin of the gods, and of the people.

They lured humanity away from its animal nature,

and led it towards a gentler, more civilized life.

As Orpheus grew up, his talent too continued to grow.

(light music)

But the young man also longed for adventure.

He dreamt of far off lands and fabulous deeds,

so he set out to travel the world.

Wherever he went, he was acclaimed by the people.

Men and women welcomed him

with garlands of flowers and fell at his feet.

One morning, he came to Thessaly

and there he heard that a certain Jason

was going off on an expedition to retrieve

an extraordinary object, the Golden Fleece.

(bright music)

This fleece was in fact

the coat of a winged ram named Khrysomallos.

It had been hanging from an oak tree for many years,

in a sacred grove that lay

at the other end of the world in Colchis.

Orpheus was fascinated by the story of the Golden Fleece,

and decided to write a song about it.

How had this mysterious fleece come to be there

at the end of the world, so far away from Greece?

It was the result, he learned, of a simple family conflict.

(suspenseful music)

Two young children named Phrixus and Helle,

a brother and a sister,

were the victims of a cruel and vindictive stepmother,

their father's second wife,

who hated them so much that she plotted to get rid of them

by convincing their own father to sacrifice them.

(lightning crashing)

Phrixus and Helle begged Zeus to help them escape.

Moved by their pleas,

the ruler of Mount Olympus decided to come to their rescue,

and he sent the children his winged ram

with the golden fleece and the golden horns, Khrysomallos.

The two siblings hopped on the ram and took off for Colchis.

During their flight however,

Helle out of curiosity leaned over a little too far

and she fell into the waters

of the entrance to the Black Sea.

That strait would from then on

would be called Hellespont, after her.

(sorrowful music)

When he finally arrived in Colchis,

Phrixus sacrificed the ram in honor of Zeus,

and then hung its golden fleece from a sacred oak.

It would not have been a difficult task

to take that fleece down from the tree,

but the king who ruled over the land

had assigned a fearsome dragon to guard it.

This terrible fire-breathing beast

burnt to a crisp anyone who tried to approach it.

Jason however, was not daunted

by dragons or any other kind of fiendish creatures.

He was 20 years old and at that age, young men are fearless.

Nothing could stop him

from going after the legendary fleece.

There was a kingdom at stake,

and it wasn't just any kingdom, it was his own.

If he brought back the Golden Fleece,

he would win the throne.

(dramatic music)

Jason knew that everyone

who had undertaken the quest had perished.

It was a perilous journey full of dangers.

Orpheus who was aware of the risks,

offered his services to Jason.

At first, Jason was reluctant.

What use would a musician or even worse, a poet be to him?

What he needed was a soldier or an experienced navigator.

Orpheus insisted.

His lyre, he explained, a gift from the god Apollo,

would support the efforts of the rowers

and his poems would lift the spirits of his companions

in their moments of despair.

Jason agreed to take him on.

Now all they needed was a boat.

It would be the Argo, named for the man who built it, Argus.

An enormous vessel,

its crew would consist of the greatest heroes and princes

who had come from all over Greece

to participate in this extraordinary adventure.

Jason chose 52 of the best.

They would be the Argonauts.

(majestic music)

The Argo set off on its great journey,

a journey from which no one would ever have returned

if Orpheus had not been a part of it.

The presence of this virtuoso musician

would be remembered by all,

and his many remarkable deeds would never be forgotten.

From the very first day to the very last,

Orpheus' strange calm to the stormy seas

quieted the wrath of the crew,

helped pace the rowing of the oarsmen,

at the same time as his words spurred them on.

Orpheus was able to push back the clashing Symplegades rocks

when they closed in and threatened to shatter the boat.

He charmed the monstrous dragon guarding the Golden Fleece,

but there was more to come.

The Argonauts were on their way back, night was falling.

The Argo sailed on.

Up ahead, an unknown island came into view.

Then the wind rose, the sea began to quiver.

Suddenly a group of beautiful,

exquisite young maidens emerged from the water.

They swam languorously around the boat,

and then they began to sing.

A strange song, it was like a slow mournful chant,

and their voices rose up into the sky,

filling the heavens and enveloping the early evening stars.

Soon the sailors were under its spell,

ready to leap into the sea

and join those diabolical creatures known as the Sirens.

(dramatic music)

Although lovely and alluring in appearance,

the Sirens were actually malevolent beings.

Half-woman, half-fish, they were fated to live

only as long as their singing had the power

to keep mortals from continuing their way.

(light choral music)

It was then that Orpheus intervened.

Grabbing his lyre, he too began to sing,

and his singing was so beautiful and so pure,

that it drowned out the songs of the Sirens.

The Sirens were stunned,

They fell silent, and then disappeared.

The Argo was saved.

As for the Sirens, it is said that they were so dismayed

at having been out sung by Orpheus,

that they killed themselves.

However, at least two of them were still there

a few generations later when Odysseus came around.

(light music)

The epic quest for the Golden Fleece was over,

but Orpheus pursued his wanderings.

He went to Egypt where he was taken in

by the priests of Memphis.

He would stay there for 20 years.

While in Egypt, Orpheus was initiated

into rites that were new to him.

He dedicated himself to the new deities,

but did not reject the Olympian gods.

(dramatic music)

Based on the knowledge that he had acquired,

Orpheus went on to inspire a new trend

that was almost religious.

He advised his followers whose numbers

were increasing day by day, to abstain from eating meat.

This recommendation was like a challenge to the gods.

Prometheus, the rebel Titan,

had condemned the human race

to eating meat in order to survive.

Humanity thus became subject to hunger

and death because of Prometheus' actions.

By refusing to eat dead animals,

Orpheus was undoing that process, and at the same time,

undermining the entire political religious system

established by Zeus and Prometheus.

Orpheus was breaking with a certain form of communication

that had always existed between humans and their gods.

(bright music)

However, it was on meeting the lovely Eurydice,

that Orpheus would step onto the razor edge of fate.

One morning, Orpheus was walking along the fringe of a wood.

The sun was shining brightly, the sky was a dazzling blue.

There she was, Eurydice.

(bright music)

Eurydice was a dryad, one of the nymphs

that live amongst the trees in the groves and forests.

She was the image of grace and beauty itself.

For Orpheus, who until then

had showed relatively little interest

in the charms of the female sex, it was love at first sight.

Eurydice was the woman he had dreamed of all his life.

She was his double, the embodiment of his heart's desire,

the song he had never sung.

When Orpheus asked her to marry him,

Eurydice did not think twice.

She accepted immediately.

Orpheus invited every single god and goddess

in the entire Pantheon to the wedding,

and on the day of the ceremony, they were all present.

During the festivities, however,

a very strange thing happened

and it went virtually unnoticed.

Although there was not the faintest breath of wind

to be felt, a torch began to flicker.

It belonged to Hymen, the patron god of weddings.

The flame sputtered,

and then died out,

a bad omen.

Many months went by, Orpheus and Eurydice were happy.

Their love grew deeper,

until that day when the terrible event occurred.

(light music) (wind howling)

Orpheus was sitting in the shade

of a large oak tree, composing a poem.

In a nearby meadow, the nymphs were dancing.

Everyone was in a joyful, carefree mood.

Hearing the gurgling of a stream, Eurydice wandered off.

A little while later,

she came upon a forest speckled with sunlight.

Then she lay down among the anemone flowers.

She had just fallen asleep when a young shepard came by.

His name was Aristaeus.

He was dazzled by the beauty of the young woman.

He took a few steps and leaned over

to get a better look at her.

When he tried to embrace her, Eurydice woke up and screamed.

She jumped up, panic stricken, and fled across the fields.

Eurydice was frantic and in her haste to get away,

she did not see the snake crawling across her path.

In a flash, the viper leapt up and bit her in the ankle.

She staggered and collapsed in the tall grass.

(suspenseful music)

When Orpheus found her, Eurydice was already dead.

(dramatic music)

The cry of grief that Orpheus let out

caused the nymphs to run off in fright,

and the trees to tremble.

Overcome with despair, Orpheus could not accept

losing the person he loved the most in the world.

Since death had taken Eurydice from him,

he would snatch her back from death.

He would dare to do what on mortal had ever done before,

he would go down to the Underworld,

a realm from which no one had ever returned.

(suspenseful music)

Taking his lyre, Orpheus started out on his quest.

He made his way through harsh desolate landscapes,

across foul, steam drenched plains,

around vast lakes of boiling sulfur.

It was a difficult journey,

but he finally came to the fetid bogs of the River Acheron,

which emptied a little further on into the terrible Styx.

(intense music)

There in the darkness,

Orpheus saw old Charon coming toward him on his raft.

(water splashing)

Orpheus took out his lyre and sang.

First in front of the stern ferryman of the Styx,

and then in front of Cerberus, the three-headed dog

who guarded the entrance to the Underworld.

His music was so beautiful, so perfect, so moving,

that it charmed both Charon and Cerberus,

who agreed to let him in.

Orpheus descended even further into the land of the dead.

(suspenseful music)

And then there he was,

standing before the rulers of the Underworld,

the almighty Hades and his wife, Queen Persephone.

Orpheus bowed humbly, and then once again,

he started plucking the strings of his lyre,

and he sang out his grief filled lament.

With a grave expression in his eyes,

he turned to look at Persephone.

Her story, he knew, was like his a story of separation.

She too had suffered cruelly when Hades had taken her away

from her mother and brought her down to the Underworld.

Orpheus' song of sorrow had a curious effect

on the eternally damned in the depths of Tartarus.

(suspenseful music)

Suddenly, the Danaides stopped

trying to fill their bottomless jars with water,

Sisyphus rested upon his stone,

Tantalus gave up attempting

to get the water that constantly eluded him,

and Ixion's wheel stopped its incessant spinning.

Everything in that land of rocks and desolation,

seemed to become infused with the poet's song.

(light string music)

Even Hades and Persephone were moved to tears.

"So be it," said Hades.

"You can take Eurydice back with you,

"one one condition, however.

"It's the law of this kingdom,

"on the narrow path that leads up to surface,

"you'll go first with your wife behind you,

"and you must not turn around to look at her, not once,

"not until you see the light of day."

Orpheus was overjoyed and he agreed,

but that was when everything went wrong.

(suspenseful music)

Orpheus started up the path he had taken to come down.

He walked ahead.

A few steps behind him came Eurydice.

He walked and did not turn around.

They made their way through the unbroken silence,

Orpheus in front, Eurydice following.

(suspenseful music)

They climbed up the steep, rock strewn path.

They jumped over gaping chasms.

Surrounded by thick mists,

they hugged the curves of terrifying precipices.

They had almost reached the light.

A few more steps,

and they would soon be seeing the first rays of the sun.

(bright music)

(ominous music)

And it was precisely at that moment,

when he was just about to attain his goal,

that Orpheus turned,

and looked straight into Eurydice's eyes.

Immediately, Eurydice,

the unfortunate Eurydice began to recede.

Stretching her arms out desperately towards Orpheus,

so that he could hold onto her, but it was too late.

With a sob, Eurydice felt herself

being pulled back by invisible hands.

She vanished, swallowed up by the darkness.

(ominous music)

Orpheus rushed back down into the endless night.

This time, he threw himself

at the feet of the King of the Underworld and his Queen.

He implored them, in vain.

"This time there's nothing we can do for you,"

Hades replied.

"We can't help you anymore."

And Orpheus was escorted back to the surface.

(dramatic music)

What could have possibly tempted Orpheus

to give in and look back at Eurydice?

Why did he do it?

No one has ever been able to answer that question,

but it attests to a problem

that mortals sometimes encounter.

Just when it seems like success is at hand,

when the toughest part is behind us,

and all that is left is a little obstacle,

trivial and insignificant to be overcome,

that is when we are tempted to lose our mind

and undo everything we have done.

Orpheus thus represents all of our missed opportunities,

the loves, the friendships,

that we let slip through our fingers.

(light music)

When he came back alone from the Underworld,

Orpheus the radiant hero,

Orpheus the musical genius and unrivaled poet,

was like a phantom.

Devastated, inconsolable,

he decided to withdraw from the world

and live as a hermit for the rest of his days.

With a broken heart,

Orpheus spent his nights gazing at the stars,

numb with despair, watching for a sign that never came.

His sorrow was boundless, it consumed his entire being.

The melodies and poems he composed

were inevitably heartrending and melancholic.

(sorrowful music)

One day, Orpheus refused to sing and dance

with a group of maenads,

the wild, female devotees of Dionysus,

who became possessed during the god's orgiastic processions.

Deciding they'd had enough

of his lamentations and self-imposed solitude,

the frenzied Dionysian worshipers tore the poet to pieces,

and in their drunken rage, the maenads cut off his head

and threw it into the great river.

(splashing)

And then, something extraordinary happened.

The decapitated head floated down the river,

still singing its sorrowful ballad of long lost love,

and was carried out to sea by the current,

until it came to rest on the island of Lesbos.

(light music)

When they heard of Orpheus' death,

the animals in the woods began to weep.

The grieving birds stopped singing.

The mighty oaks and hardy linden trees

shed their leaves and went into mourning,

while rivers and streams overflowed with their own tears.

The muses, who had remained faithful to Orpheus,

gathered up the pieces of his body

and buried them at the foot of Mount Olympus.

They gave the poet's lyre to Zeus.

The king of the gods took it and placed it beside him,

right in the middle of the star studded sky,

in order to honor the memory of the unhappy lover,

whose lyre would forever ensure the harmony of the universe.

Out of Orpheus' magical instrument,

which continues to be illuminated

by his spirit and his soul,

a constellation was born.

It can be seen on certain nights,

glowing in the darkness of the heavens.

It is the constellation Lyra.

(dramatic music)