Kay Trinidad
Hadestown is a sung-through musical with music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell. It tells a version of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice, a young girl looking for something to eat, goes to work in a hellish industrial version of the Greek underworld to escape poverty and the cold, and her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus comes to rescue her.
The original version of the musical premiered in the town of Barre, Vermont, in 2006, followed by a production in Vergennes, Vermont the same year and a tour between Vermont and Massachusetts in 2007. After the tour, Mitchell—unsure about the future of the musical—turned it into a concept album, released in 2010.
In 2012, Mitchell met director Rachel Chavkin, and the two started to rework the stage production, with additional songs and dialogue. The new version of the musical, developed for the stage and directed by Chavkin, premiered off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop on May 6, 2016, and ran through July 31. Following productions in Edmonton and London, the show premiered in previews on Broadway in March 2019.
The Broadway production opened to critical acclaim and received numerous awards and nominations. At the 73rd Tony Awards, Hadestown received 14 nominations (the most that year) and won eight, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.
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