Hadestown

Hell has never sounded so heavenly. Come way down to Hadestown on Broadway and see Anaïs Mitchell’s Tony Award-winning contemporary retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice’s tragic tale. Get Hadestown tickets on TodayTix.

“Going to hell has never been as much fun,” New York Theatre Guide raves of the eight-time Tony Award-winning Best Musical. The New York Times calls Hadestown “state-of-the-art Broadway entertainment.”

Greek mythology meets the Great Depression in the Hadestown musical, a folk opera set in a New Orleans-inspired dive. The musical presents a fresh take on a millennia-old tale: a musician Orpheus, talented enough to charm anyone with a song, takes a dangerous journey to hell to rescue his lover, Eurydice. Their story is interwoven with that of Hades and Persephone, whose hot-and-cold romance makes the seasons change. In Hadestown, hear these stories told with lively (and Grammy-winning) folk and jazz music unlike anything else on Broadway right now.

Feel the power of love and music at this soul-stirring Broadway hit — you'll never want to leave the underworld. Luckily, you don’t have to take as dangerous a journey as Orpheus to go there yourself — get tickets to Hadestown on Broadway on TodayTix.

The titular Hadestown isn’t hell itself, but Hades's soulless factory, which is close enough. When Orpheus descends there, he comes face to face with the ruler of the underworld, who has tricked his underlings into building a wall to keep the world out, and his servants — and Persephone — in. Guiding him along with advice, warnings of danger, and haunting vocals are the messenger god Hermes and the three Fates.

Hadestown has gone on a long and winding journey of its own. The show began in writer Anaïs Mitchell’s home state of Vermont, where she staged the first two productions in 2006 and launched a Vermont-Massachusetts tour of the show in 2007. A concept album followed in 2010, preserving the music when the show’s future was unknown.

Enter Rachel Chavkin, who Mitchell reached out to in 2012 after seeing an early production of the musical Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 directed by Chavkin. Chavkin helped Mitchell rework and refine Hadestown’s songs and book for the stage, and went on to direct the subsequent productions.

Hadestown premiered in 2016 at New York Theatre Workshop, and the show went on to play in Edmonton, Canada in 2017 and at the National Theatre in London in 2019.

Finally, Hadestown was ready to heat up Broadway, led again by Chavkin, premiering in 2019 and earning 14 Tony nominations that year. Hadestown won eight, including Best Musical, Best Direction of a Musical for Chavkin, and Best Original Score for Mitchell.

What to Watch For

• Since the Hadestown concept album, Mitchell has doubled the show’s amount of music. The concept album has 20 songs, and the Broadway cast album has 40.
• Hadestown is one of many popular musicals to start as a concept album — others include The Who's Tommy, American Idiot, and Jesus Christ Superstar.
• Hadestown has since added to its collection of albums: there’s a Broadway cast recording, a live Off-Broadway cast recording, and an EP titled Why We Build The Wall, with selections from the Off-Broadway album. Two songs that would eventually appear in Hadestown — "Hades & Persephone" and an early version of "How Long?" — are also included in Mitchell’s 2007 folk album The Brightness.
• Mitchell is also a prolific songwriter with nine total albums to her name, including an eponymous album, the folksy Hymns for the Exiled, and Young Man in America, which has a similar New Orleans jazz sound as Hadestown’s music.
• Since its Off-Broadway production, the setting of the show has been changed from an outdoor setting — the sacred ground near an old tree — to an indoor one, an old Southern communion hall.
• Greek mythology isn’t the only spiritual influence seen in Hadestown. The character of Hermes is based in part on the Greek god, but also on Hoodoo and other African spiritual traditions.
• There are lots of small references to characters and events from Greek mythology in the show’s lyrics. For example, the lyric “See how the vipers and vultures surround you / And they’ll take you down” is a reference to how, in the original myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, she is killed by a snake.