Orfeu da Conceiçao: Variation on a Classical Myth

The popular French film Black Orpheus (1959), with its enchanting music, was actually based on a serious poetic drama, Orfeu da Conceicao, by the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes. It was produced in Rio de Janeiro in 1956. This happened during a period when other versions of the Orpheus myth (by Stravinsky, Cocteau, and Tennessee Williams) were being shown in the United States and Europe. In recent years a Brazilian film called simply Orfeu (1998) has been made and shown in Brazil. It pays homage to some of the music in the original film. Although it is based directly on Vinicius' play, it is updated to the 1990s. This paper is a comparative study of the different versions of the Orpheus myth mentioned here.