It was generally believed, said Theophilus, that Orpheus learned his music from the birds. His small voice, piping after theirs, filled with all the secret stories of the earth.

Time slipped and slid around him, unanchored by any fact that could be verified. Perhaps it did not matter. ‘Where does our story take place, and when?’ asked Cocteau at the start of Orphée. ‘It’s...

Tuning must come first. Each recital begins with a careful tightening of the pegs on the cross-bar, twisting them in their socket of red threads as each string is plucked and tested. He uses his...

[Hades] returned his attention to the playlist while I eased the car back on the road. His fingers flipped deftly over the screen. ‘Orpheus…Dusk…Orpheus…Dusk…do you have anything on here that doesn’t make people want to...

Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their...