Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown tells the story of the ancient Greek myth of the poet Orpheus and his doomed quest to rescue his love Eurydice from the Underworld. But in Mitchell’s hands, the familiar saga is reimagined as unfolding in a version of the U.S. that simultaneously evokes our Depression-era past, the current financial disaster (though it was written before the stock market collapse), and a post-apocalyptic future. It’s a land where people hide behind walls in a misguided attempt to preserve their “freedom” and protect their riches.

Hadestown began its existence in 2006 as a live “acoustic rock opera” that the Vermont-based singer/songwriter created in collaboration with director Ben t. Matchstick (Bread & Puppet Theater) and arranger / orchestrator Michael Chorney. After loading the sets and the 22-member cast of Vermont performers into a former circus bus and touring New England during “full-on winter,” it was time to rework a few songs. Next, Mitchell called upon a few fellow musicians to lend their voices to a recorded version—not a cast album, but a stand-alone, self-contained song cycle. The result is a veritable Who’s Who of modern indie folk/rock: Justin Vernon of Bon Iver plays Orpheus; Greg Brown is Hades; and Ani DiFranco plays Persephone. Also on hand in smaller roles are the Haden Triplets (Petra, Rachel, and Tanya) as the Fates and Ben Knox Miller of The Low Anthem as the Hermes, Mitchell herself sings the part of Eurydice.

“People often ask why I wanted to retell this particular myth,” says Mitchell. “The truth is, the first few songs just came out of nowhere. It wasn’t an academic idea or anything; the songs led to the myth, not the other way around. But once I got going I recognized in the Orpheus character something a lot of artists feel: his heartbreaking optimism. In the underworld, the rules are the rules, you don’t get a dead person back—but Orpheus believes if he can just sing/play/write something beautiful enough, maybe he can do the impossible, move the heart of stone, get through to someone. I've felt that feeling...”

From its opening notes, Hadestown is packed with irresistiblemelodies and the kind of plainspoken poetry that is a hallmark of Mitchell’s songwriting. It’s a love story set at a time “when the chips are down”—an epic tale on a personal scale, a saga both ancient and new, mythical and all too real.